Seeing stripes may cause headaches
Researchers at the University Medical Centre (UMC) Utrecht in the Netherlands believe patterns of parallel lines have the potential to cause of headaches in healthy people.
The researchers state that these patterns in anything from stripy sofas to faux-French shirts cause a rise in a type of brain activity that produce strong "gamma oscillations" which can result in negative effects like headaches and migraines.
The team behind the findings believe their research should potentially be considered by architects and designers to help create spaces for those sensitive to migraines.
Dora Hermes of the UMC told News.com.au, “Our findings imply that in designing buildings, it may be important to avoid the types of visual patterns that can activate this circuit and cause discomfort, migraines, or seizures.
"Even perfectly healthy people may feel modest discomfort from the images that are most likely to trigger seizures in photosensitive epilepsy."
New research in the field is planned after the findings.
Do stripy patterns make you feel queasy? Let us know in the comments.