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Report: Complex Migraine Caused Serene Branson to Slur Words, Not Stroke

When CBS Los Angeles TV reporter Serene Branson started slurring her words on-air, people took to the Internet wondering what happened to her.

The video then went viral and it was reported that Brenson had a stroke while she was reporting on the Grammy Awards.

Luckily, it wasn’t a stroke.

ABC News reports that Branson had a complex migraine.

Dr. Andrew Charles, director of the Headache Research and Treatment Program in the UCLA Department of Neurology, who saw Branson this morning, told ABC News, “Her description of the events is really entirely typical of complex migraine.”

“Imaging studies ruled out other kinds of problems like a stroke or primary brain event,” he told ABC News.

A complex migraine is similar to a stroke in that it stops blood flow to the brain.

“There are dramatic changes in blood flow, but in the case of migraine, the changes don’t reach the point where they actually damage the brain,” Charles told ABC News. “There are no residual effects.”