Disrupted White Matter Functional Connectivity With the Cerebral Cortex in Migraine Patients.

Jian-Ren Liu,Huai-Bin Liang,Muwei Li,Jing Wu,Yue Hu,Xiaoxia Du,Yuan Qiao,Zhaoxia Qin

doi:10.3389/fnins.2021.799854

Abstract

Background: In attempts to understand the migraine patients’ overall brain functional architecture, blood oxygenation level-dependent (BOLD) signals in the white matter (WM) and gray matter (GM) were considered in the current study. Migraine, a severe and multiphasic brain condition, is characterized by recurrent attacks of headaches. BOLD fluctuations in a resting state exhibit similar temporal and spectral profiles in both WM and GM. It is feasible to explore the functional interactions between WM tracts and GM regions in migraine.Methods: Forty-eight migraineurs without aura (MWoA) and 48 healthy controls underwent resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging. Pearson’s correlations between the mean time courses of 48 white matter (WM) bundles and 82 gray matter (GM) regions were computed for each subject. Two-sample t-tests were performed on the Pearson’s correlation coefficients (CC) to compare the differences between the MWoA and healthy controls in the GM-averaged CC of each bundle and the WM-averaged CC of each GM region.Results: The MWoAs exhibited an overall decreased average temporal CC between BOLD signals in 82 GM regions and 48 WM bundles compared with healthy controls, while little was increased. In particular, WM bundles such as left anterior corona radiata, left external capsule and bilateral superior longitudinal fasciculus had significantly decreased mean CCs with GM in MWoA. On the other hand, 16 GM regions had significantly decreased mean CCs with WM in MWoA, including some areas that are parts of the somatosensory regions, auditory cortex, temporal areas, frontal areas, cingulate cortex, and parietal cortex.Conclusion: Decreased functional connections between WM bundles and GM regions might contribute to disrupted functional connectivity between the parts of the pain processing pathway in MWoAs, which indicated that functional and connectivity abnormalities in cortical regions may not be limited to GM regions but are instead associated with functional abnormalities in WM tracts.

Highlights

Migraine, a severe and multiphasic brain condition, is characterized by recurrent attacks of moderate-to-severe headache
We observed the functional connection between white matter (WM) bundles and gray matter (GM) regions in migraines without aura (MWoA), which made up the gap between the previous studies of WM and GM
Patients with MWoAs exhibited overall decreased average temporal CCs between blood oxygenation level-dependent (BOLD) signals in 48 WM bundles and 82 GM regions compared with healthy controls (HCs), while little was increased

Summary

Introduction

A severe and multiphasic brain condition, is characterized by recurrent attacks of moderate-to-severe headache. Accumulated neuroimaging studies have found that migraine patients exhibit functional and structural abnormalities in a variety of cortical (Zhang et al, 2016, 2017a,b; Skorobogatykh et al, 2019), subcortical pain-processing regions (Qin et al, 2019, 2020a; Skorobogatykh et al, 2019; Younis et al, 2019; Kullmann and Veit, 2021) and white matter fiber tracts (Akatsuka et al, 2008; Ashina et al, 2021), that are often referred to as being part of the pain processing pathway. Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) based on blood oxygenation level-dependent (BOLD) contrast has been widely used to detect changes in neural activity in the GM but can identify similar meaningful signals in the WM (Gore et al, 2019). In attempts to understand the migraine patients’ overall brain functional architecture, blood oxygenation level-dependent (BOLD) signals in the white matter (WM) and gray matter (GM) were considered in the current study. It is feasible to explore the functional interactions between WM tracts and GM regions in migraine

Methods

Results

Discussion

Conclusion