Visual Motion Sensitivity Can Make Everyday Movement Feel Overwhelming
If scrolling on your phone, walking through a busy shopping centre or sitting in traffic leaves you dizzy, nauseous or struggling with migraine symptoms, visual motion sensitivity may be playing a role.
Visual sensitivity is common in people with migraine, but bright light is not the only possible trigger. Moving or visually complex surroundings — including crowds, traffic, scrolling screens and fast-moving television — can also provoke symptoms. Australian migraine and vestibular resources similarly recognise busy environments and visual motion as common challenges for some people with migraine.
Understanding visual motion sensitivity can make these symptoms feel less mysterious and help you recognise why seemingly ordinary environments sometimes become difficult to tolerate.
What Is Visual Motion Sensitivity?
Visual motion sensitivity describes symptoms that appear or worsen when your brain is exposed to movement or large amounts of changing visual information.
Your brain is constantly interpreting what you see. When you walk through a supermarket, drive through traffic or scroll quickly on a screen, it has to process movement, speed, depth and your position in space while deciding which visual information matters.
Usually, this happens in the background without you noticing.
With migraine, however, sensory processing can become more sensitive. Research suggests that people with migraine can respond differently to visual and other sensory information, which may help explain why visual motion sensitivity occurs. A recent study of people with vestibular migraine also found substantially greater visually induced symptoms than in healthy controls.
Why Does Visual Motion Sensitivity Feel So Overwhelming?
A busy visual scene gives your brain a lot to process at once.
Imagine walking through a crowded shopping centre. People are moving in different directions, signs and shop displays fill your peripheral vision, escalators are moving, lights may be bright and your own body is moving at the same time.
For someone experiencing visual motion sensitivity, that combination can become uncomfortable or disorientating.
Symptoms may include:
- headache or a migraine attack
- dizziness or light-headedness
- nausea
- visual discomfort
- brain fog or difficulty concentrating
- unsteadiness
- feeling overwhelmed or fatigued.
This is why visual motion sensitivity can make activities such as scrolling rapidly on a phone, watching fast-moving sport, travelling through traffic or walking through a supermarket surprisingly tiring.
Is Visual Motion Sensitivity an Eye Problem?
Not necessarily.
If you develop new or unexplained visual symptoms, an eye examination or medical assessment may be appropriate. However, visual motion sensitivity associated with migraine is not always caused by a problem with the eyes themselves.
Your brain relies on several sensory systems to work out where you are and how you are moving.
The visual system provides information about what you can see and how your surroundings are moving.
The vestibular system uses structures in the inner ear to provide information about head movement and balance.
The proprioceptive system provides information from your muscles and joints about where your body is positioned.
Your brain normally combines these signals automatically. When migraine affects sensory processing, moving visual information may become harder to tolerate or may contribute to a sense of sensory mismatch.
This can help explain why visual motion sensitivity may occur alongside dizziness, motion sickness or unsteadiness even when a routine eye examination is normal.
Why Do Screens Trigger Visual Motion Sensitivity?
Screens can combine several potential migraine triggers at once.
Scrolling creates continuous visual motion, while videos, games and social media may involve rapid changes in movement, contrast, colour and brightness. Flicker, glare, prolonged visual concentration and other environmental factors may also contribute to headache symptoms in susceptible people.
For someone with visual motion sensitivity, quickly moving through a webpage or social media feed may therefore be much more demanding than looking at a still image.
This does not necessarily mean screens are harmful. Instead, your symptoms may reflect how much visual information your nervous system can comfortably process at that time.
Can Visual Motion Sensitivity Improve?
For many people, visual motion sensitivity can become more manageable over time, although recovery and symptom patterns vary from person to person.
Management starts with understanding your individual migraine pattern. Sleep, stress, migraine frequency and other personal triggers may influence how much sensory stimulation you can tolerate on a particular day.
Depending on the cause of your symptoms, management may also include carefully graded exposure to movement or visually busy environments rather than simply avoiding them indefinitely.
Vestibular rehabilitation can include exercises designed to address movement sensitivity, balance and gaze stability. Australian hospital physiotherapy services use exercise-based rehabilitation for conditions including vestibular migraine, with programs tailored to the person’s assessment and symptoms.
Any exercise or exposure program should be individualised, particularly when symptoms are easily provoked.
What Can You Do About It?
If visual motion sensitivity is affecting your day, start by noticing when symptoms occur and what makes them better or worse.
You may find it useful to monitor whether symptoms change with factors such as poor sleep, stress, a migraine attack, long periods of screen use or particularly demanding environments.
Pacing can also matter. Shorter periods of exposure with appropriate breaks may be easier to tolerate than repeatedly pushing through severe symptoms.
Because dizziness and visual symptoms can have several causes, persistent or new symptoms should not automatically be assumed to be migraine. An appropriate assessment can help determine whether migraine, a vestibular condition, an eye problem or another factor may be contributing.
Understanding Visual Motion Sensitivity Can Make Symptoms Less Confusing
If screens, crowds, traffic or fast-moving scenes leave you dizzy, overwhelmed or struggling with migraine symptoms, visual motion sensitivity provides one possible explanation.
The problem is often not simply what your eyes can see. It can involve how the brain processes visual movement and combines that information with signals involved in balance and body position.
Recognising visual motion sensitivity can be an important step towards understanding your triggers and finding management strategies that are appropriate for your individual symptoms.
Take the Next Step
If visual motion sensitivity is interfering with screens, shopping, driving or other everyday activities, an individual assessment can help clarify what may be contributing to your symptoms and which management strategies are appropriate for you.
Book a session with one of our clinician online or call 1800 432 322.
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References
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Main, A., Dowson, A., & Gross, M. (1997). Photophobia and phonophobia in migraineurs between attacks. Headache, 37(8), 492–495. https://doi.org/10.1046/j.1526-4610.1997.3708492.x
Marcus, D. A., Soso, M. J., & Furman, J. M. (2005). Visual motion sensitivity in migraineurs. Headache, 45(7), 814–819. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1526-4610.2005.05152.x
Schwedt, T. J. (2013). Multisensory integration in migraine. Current Opinion in Neurology, 26(3), 248–253. https://doi.org/10.1097/WCO.0b013e32836085ff
Shepherd, A. J. (2019). Visual stimuli, light and lighting are common triggers of migraine and headache. The Journal of Headache and Pain, 20(1), 1–15. https://doi.org/10.1186/s10194-019-0984-1
Vingen, J. V., Pareja, J. A., Støren, O., White, L. R., & Stovner, L. J. (1998). Phonophobia in migraine. Cephalalgia, 18(5), 243–249. https://doi.org/10.1046/j.1468-2982.1998.1805243.x
