Abstract
Migraine is a common neurological disorder characterized by recurrent episodes of headache, frequently accompanied by various reversible neurological disturbances. Some migraine patients experience visually triggered migraine headache, and most attacks of migraine with aura are associated with the disturbance of vision and photophobia, suggesting an abnormal neural activity in the visual cortex. Numerous studies have shown a large cortical hemodynamic response to visual stimulation and an altered intrinsic visual functional connectivity network in patients with migraine. In this interictal study, we applied a novel data-driven method with fMRI to identify the functional network in the visual cortex evoked by visual stimulation and investigated the effect of migraine on this network. We found that the distribution of the functional network along both the ventral and dorsal visual pathways differed between migraine patients and non-headache healthy control participants, providing evidence that the functional network was altered in migraine between headaches. The functional network was bilateral in the control participants but substantially lateralized in the migraine patients. The results also indicated different effects of colored lenses on the functional network for both participant groups.
Highlights
Migraine is a common neurological disorder characterized by recurrent episodes of headache, frequently accompanied by various reversible neurological disturbances
Blood oxygenation level dependent (BOLD) functional magnetic resonance imaging provides a non-invasive neuroimaging tool to study the cortical activation in the human brain evoked by visual stimulation [7,8,9]
We recently reported the discovery of functional areas of unitary pooled activity (FAUPAs) with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) that provided a novel method to identify task-evoked Functional connectivity (FC) networks [40]
Summary
Migraine is a common neurological disorder characterized by recurrent episodes of headache, frequently accompanied by various reversible neurological disturbances. Bright light, flickering light, and certain visual patterns can trigger a migraine attack [5,6]. These effects indicate an altered visual cortical function in migraine. Several fMRI studies have shown a dysfunction of the visual network in both MwA and migraine without aura (MwoA) [10]. Altered BOLD responses in both the occipital cortex and brainstem structures during stimulation-triggered visual symptoms and/or migraine attacks have been reported [17,18]. The abnormal BOLD responses of MwoA patients to visual stimulation suggested a dysfunction of the visual network in this subgroup of migraine [21]
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