What people see during a seizure depends entirely on the type of seizure and where in the brain it starts. Some people see flashing colored circles, others see entire scenes play out like an old movie, and many see nothing at all because they lose consciousness before any visual experience registers. The visual part of a seizure, when it happens, is one of the most varied and strange experiences in neurology.
Simple Flashing Lights and Patterns
The most common visual seizure experience starts in the occipital lobe, the brain region at the back of your head that processes sight. Between 40% and 75% of people with seizures originating here report a visual “aura,” a brief warning experience that occurs just before or at the start of the seizure itself.
These elementary hallucinations typically appear as small, colored, circular patterns that flash or multiply in one side of the visual field. Think of bright round dots rapidly appearing and growing in number, usually off to one side rather than dead center. Flashing white lights or non-circular shapes are less common. A small number of people see achromatic flickering lights instead, more like a strobe effect without color.
These episodes are brief. Seizure-related visual auras often last only seconds, and rarely more than five minutes. That speed is one key difference from migraine auras, which tend to build slowly over 20 to 30 minutes and often feature expanding zigzag lines or shimmering edges. Seizure auras also tend to appear on the same side every time, while migraine auras can switch sides between episodes.
Seeing People, Scenes, and Memories
When seizure activity involves the temporal lobe (the brain’s center for memory, emotion, and recognizing complex images), the visual experience becomes far more elaborate. Instead of simple lights, people report “formed” or complex hallucinations: seeing figures, animals, or full scenes. One well-documented patient described cinematographic hallucinations, seeing people in full color but with interruptions, as if watching frames of an old film skip and jump. These complex visions can also appear in black and white.
An interesting and somewhat unsettling detail: when people see human figures during these seizures, the figures are almost never recognizable. They look like people, but not anyone specific. In some cases, the hallucinations consist of visual memories, fragments of scenes from the person’s past replaying involuntarily. Temporal lobe seizures can also involve visual distortions where familiar objects or faces warp and shift in shape, overlapping with the size-change illusions described below.
Objects Changing Size and Distance
Some seizures create a genuinely disorienting experience where objects, other people, or even your own body appear to grow, shrink, or shift in distance. This cluster of symptoms is sometimes called Alice in Wonderland syndrome. Objects may look dramatically smaller than they are (micropsia) or larger (macropsia). Other people might seem to be standing much farther away or uncomfortably close, even though they haven’t moved.
Your own body can be affected too. People describe feeling like their hand has become enormous, or that their entire body has shrunk. These body-size distortions happen because the seizure disrupts a crossroads area where the brain integrates visual and body-sensing information, a junction where the temporal, parietal, and occipital lobes meet. When that integration breaks down, the brain’s internal map of “how big am I” and “how far away is that” stops matching reality.
The brain uses two separate processing streams for vision. One handles movement and position, the other handles size, shape, and color. Size illusions like micropsia and macropsia primarily involve the second stream, which runs through the temporal lobe and constantly rescales objects relative to their surroundings. When seizure activity disrupts this rescaling, the world looks like a funhouse mirror.
Going Completely Blind
At the opposite extreme, some seizures cause total vision loss. This is called ictal amaurosis, and it happens when seizure activity overwhelms the visual cortex rather than stimulating it. Instead of producing hallucinations, the overactive electrical signals effectively shut down visual processing. Studies of patients with this experience typically find abnormalities in the parietal-occipital region, the brain area where higher-level visual interpretation happens.
Temporary blindness can also occur after a seizure ends. This post-ictal blindness usually resolves within several days as the brain recovers, though in rare cases lasting visual deficits remain. During this recovery period, vision may return gradually, starting blurry or patchy before clearing.
When There’s Nothing to See at All
Generalized tonic-clonic seizures, the type most people picture when they think of seizures (full-body convulsions, loss of muscle control), begin with an abrupt loss of consciousness. There is no aura, no visual warning, no experience of seeing anything. The person’s awareness shuts off essentially instantaneously. Whatever they were looking at simply vanishes, replaced by a gap in consciousness. When they come to afterward, they have no memory of the event itself.
This is worth emphasizing because the question “what do people see during a seizure” sometimes has the straightforward answer: nothing. The majority of people who experience generalized seizures have no visual experience to report at all. The visual phenomena described above are specific to focal seizures, those that start in one region of the brain and may or may not spread.
What a Visual Aura Feels Like as a Warning
For people whose seizures do begin with visual symptoms, those symptoms serve as an early warning. Common pre-seizure visual experiences include flashing bright lights, spots, or wavy lines. These often arrive alongside non-visual warnings like a sudden wave of fear or anxiety, nausea, or a spinning sensation.
Recognizing these auras matters practically. Because a seizure can cause a fall or loss of muscle control within seconds to minutes, the visual warning is a narrow window to get to a safe position. That means sitting or lying down on the ground, moving away from sharp furniture or stairs, and ideally being somewhere a fall won’t cause injury. The aura doesn’t always lead to a full seizure, but treating it as a signal every time is the safer approach.
How Seizure Visuals Differ From Migraine Auras
Many people who experience visual disturbances wonder whether they’re having a seizure or a migraine, since both can produce flashing lights and visual distortions. Several features help distinguish them. Seizure auras are fast, often lasting seconds or under five minutes. Migraine auras develop slowly and typically last 20 to 60 minutes. Seizure auras tend to be “side-locked,” always appearing in the same part of the visual field. Migraine auras can vary in location.
Seizure auras are more likely to feature simple colored circles or spots rather than the classic migraine pattern of expanding scintillating zigzag lines. Visual auras that first appear after age 40, occur without any headache, or leave behind a lasting blind spot in one area of vision are more suspicious for seizure activity. That said, the overlap between the two can be significant enough that even experienced neurologists sometimes find the distinction difficult to make based on a patient’s description alone.