Abstract
BackgroundMigraine constitute a disorder characterized by recurrent headaches, and have a high prevalence, a high socio-economic burden and severe effects on quality of life. Our previous fMRI study demonstrated that some brain regions are functional alterations in migraineurs. As the function of the human brain is related to its structure, we further investigated white and gray matter structural alterations in migraineurs.MethodsIn current study, we used surface-based morphometry, voxel-based morphometry and diffusion tensor imaging analyses to detect structural alterations of the white matter and gray matter in 32 migraineurs without aura compared with 32 age- and gender-matched healthy controls.ResultsWe found that migraineurs without aura exhibited significantly increased gray matter volume in the bilateral cerebellar culmen, increased cortical thickness in the lateral occipital-temporal cortex, decreased cortical thickness in the right insula, increased gyrification index in left postcentral gyrus, superior parietal lobule and right lateral occipital cortex, and decreased gyrification index in the left rostral middle frontal gyrus compared with controls. No significant change in white matter microstructure was found in DTI analyses.ConclusionThe significantly altered gray matter brain regions were known to be associated with sensory discrimination of pain, multi-sensory integration and nociceptive information processing and were consistent with our previous fMRI study, and may be involved in the pathological mechanism of migraine without aura.
Highlights
Migraine constitute a disorder characterized by recurrent headaches, and have a high prevalence, a high socio-economic burden and severe effects on quality of life
We found that the significantly altered brain regions in migraine patients were primarily concentrated in the gray matter based on Voxel-based morphometry (VBM) and Surface based morphometry (SBM) analyses (Table 2, Fig. 1), whereas there were no significant microstructural changes in the white matter in diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) analyses
In our previous task-functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) study, we found that migraineurs exhibited hyperactivation in the anterior cerebellum lobe/culmen and visual cortex while viewing negative minus neutral affective pictures compared with healthy controls, and we proposed that migraine patients may have hypersensitivities to negative affective stimuli or that there is less inhibition in the cerebellum of migraineurs [23]
Summary
Migraine constitute a disorder characterized by recurrent headaches, and have a high prevalence, a high socio-economic burden and severe effects on quality of life. Our previous fMRI study demonstrated that some brain regions are functional alterations in migraineurs. As the function of the human brain is related to its structure, we further investigated white and gray matter structural alterations in migraineurs. Several MRI studies have identified functional and structural changes between migraine patients and healthy controls, and have suggested that brain malfunctioning may be associated with migraine pathophysiology [2,3,4,5,6,7]. Two previous meta-analyses aimed to locate concordant gray matter alterations in migraine patients and found concordant decreases in gray matter volume (GMV) in some brain regions involved in pain-related processes [13, 14]. Structural alterations of the white matter and gray matter in migraineurs without aura should be further investigated
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