Striped Floors and Flickering Lights: Could Modern Design Be Overloading Our Brains?

A broad review proposes that modern visual environments—striped patterns, dense text, and flickering LEDs—may push the visual cortex beyond its efficient processing range, causing headaches, eye strain, nausea, and even seizures in some people; neurodivergent individuals and migraineurs are disproportionately affected. The proposed mechanism is metabolic overload from inefficient encoding, with potential mitigations through smarter building design, tinted lenses, and overlays, though the authors caution the hypothesis is not yet proven and further research is needed.