Do these striped pants make my butt look fat? No, but that may make someone's head hurt at the migraine level and could even cause an epileptic seizure. A new study in Current Biology found that simple vertical lines can cause headache-inducing brain activity even in healthy people and could induce migraines or seizures in those with photosensitive epilepsy. Is this the end of zebras, referees and bar codes? While it has long been known that flickering or flashing lights can trigger epileptic seizures and migraines, this is the first time that stripes have been studied as a potential trigger mechanism. Researchers led by Dr. Dora Hermes of the University Medical Center (UMC) Utrecht in the Netherlands attached electrodes to the scalps of volunteers to measure repetitive patterns of brain activity. They then showed the participants stripes of all shapes, sizes and patterns interspersed with non-striped images. What they found is that stripes produced an increase in the brain activity