Abstract Details

Title An Invisible Pain: Migraines, Medical Imaging, and the Artistic Challenge to the Medical Gaze

Topic Headache

Presentation(s) P4 - Poster Session 4 (5:00 PM-6:00 PM)

Poster/Presentation
Number 12-004

Objective To explore how moving images and artistic representations critique the limitations of medical imaging technologies in capturing the complexity of migraine pain, particularly how they challenge the traditional clinical gaze.

Background Recent advancements in MRI technology have revealed significant changes in the perivascular spaces of the brain during episodic migraines and migraines with aura. While these developments provide new insights into migraine pathology, they remain grounded in objective, visible evidence and fail to address the subjective experience of pain. Drawing on Foucault’s concept of the clinical gaze and Lisa Cartwright’s exploration of how cinema rejuvenates the study of pathological anatomy, this study critiques the reliance on imaging technologies to fully encapsulate the dynamic, often invisible nature of migraines.

Design/Methods

This study analyzes moving image works and artistic representations that recontextualize medical images, including the films from the American Migraine Foundation archive, Susanna Styron's Out of My Head (2018), and The Migraine Art Collection from the Wellcome Collection. My research uses a phenomenological approach as well as textual analysis, archival research, and a small ethnographic component, comparing migraine representations with clinical pain management practices. IRB approval will be obtained to ensure an ethical study of migraine sufferers’ experiences.

Results Preliminary analysis reveals that these works challenge the dominance of objective medical images by highlighting the fragmented, subjective experiences of migraine sufferers. By transforming medical imagery into a reflective medium, they propose alternative visualizations that emphasize the incomplete and often misleading nature of traditional imaging technologies in fully representing neurological pain.

Conclusions Art and science, when combined, can reveal the biases inherent in medical imaging technologies. This study demonstrates that a more nuanced, interdisciplinary approach is required to visualize and understand the elusive nature of migraines, integrating both clinical data and subjective experience to challenge the constraints of the medical gaze.

Authors/Disclosures
Hannah Forsythe PRESENTER	Miss Forsythe has nothing to disclose.

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