Abnormal brain activity changes in patients with migraine: a short-term longitudinal study

Abstract

Background and purpose: Whether or not migraine can cause cumulative brain alterations due to frequent migraine-related nociceptive input in patients is largely unclear. The aim of this study was to characterize longitudinal changes in brain activity between repeated observations within a short time interval in a group of female migraine patients, using resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging.

Methods: Nineteen patients and 20 healthy controls (HC) participated in the study. Regional homogeneity (ReHo) and functional interregional connectivity were assessed to determine the focal and global features of brain dysfunction in migraine. The relationship between changes in headache parameters and longitudinal brain alterations were also investigated.

Results: All patients reported that their headache activity increased over time. Abnormal ReHo changes in the patient group relative to the HC were found in the putamen, orbitofrontal cortex, secondary somatosensory cortex, brainstem, and thalamus. Moreover, these brain regions exhibited longitudinal ReHo changes at the 6-week follow-up examination. These headache activity changes were accompanied by disproportionately dysfunctional connectivity in the putamen in the migraine patients, as revealed by functional connectivity analysis, suggesting that the putamen plays an important role in integrating diverse information among other migraine-related brain regions.

Conclusions: The results obtained in this study suggest that progressive brain aberrations in migraine progress as a result of increased headache attacks.

Keywords: brain functional abnormality; longitudinal study; migraine; resting state.

Fig. 1

Between-group differences in local brain activity in patients and healthy controls.

Fig. 2

Longitudinal brain changes in regional homogeneity (ReHo) occurred in migraine patients (PM) within a relatively short period of time (p<0.01, corrected for the false discovery rate). Warm colors indicate ReHo increases in PM relative to the baseline level. BS: brainstem, OFC: orbitofrontal cortex, PUT: putamen, SII: secondary somatosensory A B cortex, THA: thalamus.

Fig. 3

Abnormal functional connectivity and its relationship with changes in headache attack frequency. The putamen (PUT), orbitofrontal cortex (OFC), secondary somatosensory cortex (SII), brainstem (BS), and thalamus (THA) were chosen as the regions of interest for the functional connectivity analysis (red balls). A: The gray lines indicate a significant correlation between the changes in attack frequency and the ratio of changes in functional connectivity intensity (p<0.05). B: The color connections indicate the significant changes in functional connectivity intensity in the migraine group between the repeated observations, and represent significant correlations between the changes in attack frequency (red lines: positive correlations; blue A B lines: negative correlations).