Migraine is a disabling neurological disorder, the exact neurological mechanisms of which remain unclear. Therefore, this study was done to understand the neurological mechanisms associated with migraines.
48 MWoAs during the interictal phase and 48 healthy controls underwent resting‐state functional magnetic resonance imaging scans. Masked independent component analysis and seed‐based FC were used to investigate whether MWoAs exhibited abnormal FC between subregions in the thalamus and the cortex regions.
The MWoAs showed significantly weaker FC between the anterior dorsal thalamic nucleus and left precuneus. Additionally, MWoAs exhibited significantly reduced FC between the VPN and left precuneus, R‐IPL, and right middle frontal gyrus. The disease duration of patients was negatively correlated with the FC Z‐scores between the VPN and R‐IPL.
The study concluded through its findings that altered thalamocortical connectivity patterns may contribute to multisensory integration abnormalities, deficits in pain attention, cognitive evaluation, and pain modulation. Pain sensitivity and disease duration are closely tied to abnormal FC between the VPN and R‐IPL. Remarkably, recurrent headache attacks might contribute to this maladaptive functional plasticity closely related to pain intensity.
Reference: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/ene.14411
