Visual snow looks like many tiny, moving dots across your vision — often compared with TV static.

Visual snow syndrome (VSS) involves static lasting more than three months, with at least two other types of visual symptoms:

• Afterimages or trails behind moving objects.
• Unusually noticeable visual effects, such as floaters.
• Light sensitivity.
• Difficulty seeing at night.

A clinician needs to check that another condition does not explain the symptoms.

Migraine is common among people with VSS. A large survey found that migraine was associated with a more severe VSS symptom profile.

This association does not prove that migraine causes visual snow. VSS can occur without migraine, and most people with migraine do not have VSS.

Researchers are exploring possible overlap in how the brain processes sensory information. The exact relationship remains uncertain.

They are different, although someone can have both.

Aura can occur without headache. Other persistent visual symptoms also exist, so diagnosis needs individual assessment.

Migraine treatment can reduce migraine attacks and their impact. It may not remove persistent visual snow.

There is no treatment that reliably eliminates VSS for everyone. Evidence for medicines and other approaches remains limited.

A clinician can help choose care for each condition and review benefits and side effects. Discuss new or worsening visual symptoms with your prescriber; do not stop medicines suddenly.

• Adjust lighting and screen brightness to a comfortable level.
• Try larger text, simpler pages or audio when reading is tiring.
• Take breaks from visually demanding tasks.
• Use your migraine care plan and allow recovery time.

These are practical comfort options, not proven cures for VSS. Ask an eye-care professional whether lenses or tints might suit you.

• When the visual symptoms started.
• Whether they are continuous or come in episodes.
• Whether they affect both eyes or only one.
• How they relate to headache or other symptoms.
• Any recent head injury, medicine changes or substance use.

Your GP can arrange eye assessment and, when appropriate, neurology or neuro-ophthalmology care.

You do not need a detailed diary. A short note or drawing may be enough to start the conversation.

Seek urgent eye care for sudden new flashes or floaters, a rapid increase in them, blurred vision, eye pain, or a dark curtain or shadow over your vision.

Call 000 in Australia for sudden vision loss with weakness, difficulty speaking or other stroke-like symptoms, or a sudden extremely severe headache.

Do not wait for these symptoms to match your usual migraine or visual snow pattern.

This connection involves Pain / Bodily Sensitivity and Sensory / Neurodevelopmental experiences. VSS itself does not imply a neurodevelopmental diagnosis.

Sleep, fatigue and emotional wellbeing may also need support. Reducing visual demands may make daily tasks easier alongside migraine care.

• International Headache Society: Visual snow criteria and migraine connection.
• International Headache Society: Migraine with aura.
• Puledda and colleagues (2020): Visual snow syndrome — description of 1,100 cases.
• Puledda and colleagues: Treatment response and symptom progression in 400 people with VSS.
• NHS: Floaters, flashes and urgent warning signs.