Migraine Trivia
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100 free Migraine trivia questions with answers — science & nature quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
This migraine trivia quiz is for the roughly one person in seven who lives with the condition, and for anyone curious about what is actually going on. It starts with the basics: the four phases of an attack, how long an aura lasts, what a scintillating scotoma looks like, the 5-4-3-2-1 diagnostic rule, and why the word itself comes from the Greek for half a skull. From there it moves into mechanism and epidemiology: the trigeminal nerve, cortical spreading depression, the CGRP molecule, why women from puberty onwards suffer up to four times as often as men, and what status migrainosus and medication-overuse headache are. The treatment questions run from ergot, first used in 1868, to the isolation of ergotamine, the arrival of sumatriptan in 1991 and the CGRP antibody approved in 2018. The history section visits the Ebers Papyrus, Hippocrates, Galen, Hildegard of Bingen's visions, Thomas Willis and the French librarian who first split migraine into two types. There are also questions on the odder corners: Alice in Wonderland syndrome, abdominal migraine in children, and why opioids are a bad idea. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia's articles on migraine and its treatments, and each question links to the page that establishes it. Fifty-one questions, free, with an explanation after every answer.
30 of 100 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01What does the Greek root of the word 'migraine' mean?
Pain in half of the head
Pain in half of the head: the Greek hemikrania, 'half-skull', named the classic one-sided attack. Everyday speech later swallowed the first syllable, which is how hemicrania wore down into migraine.
Q 02What was an early English spelling of migraine that also meant low spirits?
Megrim
Megrim was the usual English form for centuries, and an 1895 dictionary still filed the headache under it. The French spelling migraine has since pushed it out, and megrim is now archaic even for the blues or a passing whim.
Q 03Roughly what share of the world's population has migraine in a given year?
14%
14% is about one person in seven, more than a billion people. Yet most are never properly diagnosed: because attacks come and go, the WHO notes, headache is rarely taken as seriously as it should be.
Q 04A migraine 'aura' takes its name from the Greek word for what?
Breeze
Breeze. Doctors first used the word for the current of cold air some patients felt rising towards the head just before a seizure, and it grew to cover any strange sensation that comes shortly before an attack.
Q 05What is the name for the warning phase of a migraine, hours or even days before the pain begins?
Prodrome
Prodrome signs include repeated yawning, food cravings and a stiff neck. They are worth learning: people who spot them can treat the attack early, which for some heads off the worst of it.
Q 06A typical migraine aura fades within about which length of time?
An hour
An hour. Aura symptoms creep in over at least five minutes and fade within 60, and the headache usually arrives before that hour is up.
Q 07Migraine with aura was once called 'classic'; what was migraine without aura called?
Common
Common migraine. Only about 30% of people with migraine ever get an aura, so the 'classic' kind is in fact the rarer one; doctors now simply say migraine without aura.
Q 08What is the term for the flickering, zigzag visual disturbance of a migraine aura?
Scintillating scotoma
Scintillating scotoma. The shimmering zigzag usually starts near the centre of vision and drifts to one side over several minutes, leaving a temporary blind patch in its wake.
Q 09After visual disturbances, what is the next most frequent migraine aura symptom?
Pins and needles
Pins and needles. The tingling typically starts in one hand, creeps up the arm to the face on the same side, and can leave numbness behind as it passes.
Q 10What popular name is given to a migraine aura that comes without a headache?
Silent migraine
Silent migraine is the popular name, but doctors say migraine aura without headache, because the vision loss and sensitivity to light and sound can be disabling even with no pain.
Q 11Which colour of light did researchers find aggravates a migraine headache least?
Green
Green. White, blue, amber and red light all aggravated the pain more than green did, and for some people a narrow band of green even eased it, a finding that has put green lamps on sale as a migraine aid.
Q 12Compared with adults, young migraine patients more often feel the pain where?
On both sides
On both sides. Adult migraine is classically one-sided, but in the young the pain often takes in both sides of the head, and the one-sided pattern tends to emerge only in late adolescence or early adult life.
Q 13What is the name for a migraine attack lasting more than 72 hours despite treatment?
Status migrainosus
Q 21Which brain phenomenon is associated with migraine aura?
Cortical spreading depression
Cortical spreading depression is a slow wave of abnormal electrical activity that creeps across the brain's surface; alarming as it sounds, the migraine kind is typically harmless and the symptoms it causes are temporary.
Q 22Which trigger do people with migraine name more often than any other?
Stress
Stress. Surveys find 70 to 80% of people with migraine name it, yet for some the attack arrives only once the pressure lifts, at a weekend or on holiday: a 'let-down migraine'.
Q 23The '5, 4, 3, 2, 1' rule for diagnosing migraine without aura begins with what?
Status migrainosus can bring severe dehydration from vomiting, so a relentless attack sometimes ends with fluids and medicines given through a drip in hospital.
Q 14Along with sensitivity to light and sound, which symptom do most people get during a migraine attack?
Nausea
Nausea. Most people feel sick during an attack and many vomit, which is why anti-sickness medicines are a standard part of migraine treatment alongside painkillers.
Q 15What is the postdrome phase commonly nicknamed?
Migraine hangover
Migraine hangover. The attack isn't over when the pain stops: tiredness, poor concentration and thirst can linger for a day or two afterwards.
Q 16Which treatment, injected around the head and neck every 12 weeks, is approved to prevent chronic migraine?
Botox
Botox. Approved for migraine in 2010, it is licensed only for the chronic form, meaning headache on 15 or more days a month; people with occasional attacks don't qualify.
Q 17Boys and girls get migraine at equal rates until which stage of life?
Puberty
Puberty. Before it migraine is equally common in both sexes; afterwards the rate climbs much faster in girls, and adult women are about three times as likely as men to have it.
Q 18Which of these triggers do women with migraine report most often?
Hormonal variation
Hormonal variation. Many women with migraine notice attacks around their period, when oestrogen levels fall in the days before it starts.
Q 19Which cranial pathway carries the pain signals central to migraine?
Trigeminal nerve
Trigeminal nerve. Best known for carrying feeling from the face, it also supplies the pain-sensitive coverings of the brain, which is where migraine pain signals start.
Q 20What does CGRP, a molecule central to migraine pain, stand for?
Calcitonin gene-related peptide
Calcitonin gene-related peptide. Levels of this protein rise during an attack, when it is released around the brain and inflames the pain-sensitive coverings.
Five or more attacks
Five or more attacks, then 4 hours to 3 days of pain, 2 of four pain features and 1 accompanying symptom; with aura the bar is lower, and just two attacks are enough for a diagnosis.
Q 24Which body has published the standard diagnostic criteria for migraine since 1988?
International Headache Society
International Headache Society. Its checklist diagnoses migraine from symptoms alone, since no blood test or scan can confirm it, and has been revised twice, in 2004 and 2018.
Q 25An aura accompanied by motor weakness defines which type of migraine?
Hemiplegic migraine
Hemiplegic migraine. The weakness hits one side of the body and can last for days, and the familial form is a rarity among migraines: it is passed on by a single faulty gene.
Q 26Which type of migraine can cause temporary blindness in one eye?
Retinal migraine
Retinal migraine. It arises in or behind one eye, so only that eye's sight dims, whereas an ordinary aura starts in the brain and so shows up in both eyes at once.
Q 27Abdominal migraine, with bouts of severe stomach pain, is mostly diagnosed in whom?
Children
Children are the usual patients: the attacks bring hours of stomach pain with no headache at all, yet most of them go on to develop migraine headaches later in life.
Q 28Which perceptual disorder linked to migraine makes objects seem too large or too small?
Alice in Wonderland syndrome
Alice in Wonderland syndrome. Psychiatrist John Todd named it in 1955 after the heroine who shrinks and grows; an American neurologist had described it three years earlier, but Todd's label is the one that stuck.
Q 29Which ingredient of some migraine painkillers can itself trigger attacks?
Caffeine
Caffeine. It boosts the effect of painkillers such as paracetamol and ibuprofen, but too much can bring on an attack and so can quitting abruptly, so the advice is to cut down gradually.
Q 30Which class of drug is first-line for moderate to severe migraine attacks?
Triptans
Triptans. Unlike everyday painkillers they were developed specifically for migraine, and they work best when taken early in an attack.