Abstract
Migraine is a disease that peaks in late adolescence and early adulthood. The aim of this study was to evaluate age-related brain changes in resting state functional connectivity (rs-FC) in migraineurs vs. age-sex matched healthy controls at two developmental stages: adolescence vs. young adulthood. The effect of the disease was assessed within each developmental group and age- and sex-matched healthy controls and between developmental groups (migraine-related age effects). Globally the within group comparisons indicated more widespread abnormal rs-FC in the adolescents than in the young adults and more abnormal rs-FC associated with sensory networks in the young adults. Direct comparison of the two groups showed a number of significant changes: (1) more connectivity changes in the default mode network in the adolescents than in the young adults; (2) stronger rs-FC in the cerebellum network in the adolescents in comparison to young adults; and (3) stronger rs-FC in the executive and sensorimotor network in the young adults. The duration and frequency of the disease were differently associated with baseline intrinsic connectivity in the two groups. fMRI resting state networks demonstrate significant changes in brain function at critical time point of brain development and that potentially different treatment responsivity for the disease may result.
Highlights
Migraine is a common disease frequently beginning in childhood, with its highest prevalence in adolescence and early adulthood – prevalence peaks in late teens and early twenties (Victor et al, 2010)
From the 102 right-handed adolescents and young adults included in the study (51 migraineurs and 51 healthy controls (HC)), 30 pairs of participants were excluded from the analyses
Specific exclusions issues included: (1) After quality assurance and pre-processing of the data, 2 HC were excluded due to brain abnormalities and 4 migraine participants due to positive drug testing, headache just before or during the scan, or problem of registration; (2) 2 HC and 3 migraine participants were excluded due to peaks of motion higher than 2 mm or 2 degrees during the scan detected from MCFLIRT estimated rotations, translations, or mean displacement; and (3) to avoid an unbalanced number of males and females in the analysis, 3 more females (2 adolescents and 1 young adult) and one young adult male with migraine were randomly excluded from the analyses
Summary
Migraine is a common disease frequently beginning in childhood, with its highest prevalence in adolescence and early adulthood – prevalence peaks in late teens and early twenties (Victor et al, 2010). During adolescence, changes in functional connectivity strengths and network relationships are still happening (Marek et al, 2015; Stevens, 2016) and brain differences with young adults include the relative development of subcortical limbic systems vs topdown control systems and a shift from local to distal connectivity profiles (Power et al, 2010; Wang et al, 2012; Baker et al, 2015; Ernst et al, 2015; Stevens, 2016). That kind of approach is challenging, especially in school-age children Another approach is to evaluate potential similarities and differences in brain resting state functional connectivity (rs-FC) as they may occur with age (viz., childhood vs adults)
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