Impaired Auditory Information Processing During Acute Migraine: A Magnetoencephalography Study

Abstract

Acute migraine could be associated with neurophysiological and cognitive changes. This study evaluates the neurophysiological changes in auditory information processing in adolescents with acute migraine by means of magnetoencephalography. The multifeature sound mismatch negativity (MMN) paradigm was used to study nine adolescents with an acute migraine and nine age- and gender-matched healthy controls. Latencies and amplitudes of M100, M150, M200, and MMNm responses were evaluated. Migraine subjects had smaller M150 amplitudes than healthy subjects. The latencies of MMNm response for the frequency change were delayed in both hemispheres in migraine subjects, as compared with healthy controls. Our results indicate that the function of neural substrates, responsible for different stages of auditory information processing, is impaired during the acute migraine. The identification of underlying cortical dysfunction during an acute migraine can lead to future identification of neurophysiological biomarkers for studying acute migraine and response to treatment.

Spatial Heterogeneity of Cortical Excitability in Migraine Revealed by Multifrequency Neuromagnetic Signals

“…To analyze time-locked neuromagnetic responses, conventional averaging was applied to waveform data 13, 24, 35 . To analyze phase-locked neuromagnetic oscillations (not necessarily time-locked), MEG waveforms were transformed to spectrograms, as described in detail in previous reports 38, 39 .…”

“…This approach was ideal because the entire calculation was completed objectively by an optimized workflow 24, 25 . The time window for quantifying spectral power at sensor levels was 0–200 ms for the frequency ranges of interest (5–100 Hz and 100–1000 Hz) for both auditory and movement elicited activation.…”

“…Magnetoencephalography (MEG), a relatively new clinical modality for noninvasive assessment of functional brain activation, has been used to find that there are significant neuromagnetic abnormalities in the motor cortex of childhood migraine sufferers 13,37 . There is evidence that the auditory cortex exhibits decreased activation in some childhood migraine sufferers 24 . Reports from functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) 21 and transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) 29 also reveal that migraine subjects have impaired cortical excitability.…”

Physical Feature Encoding and Word Recognition Abilities Are Altered in Children with Intractable Epilepsy: Preliminary Neuromagnetic Evidence

“…For the acoustical presentation, the words were delivered through plastic tubes into subject's left and right ears with averaged intensity of 75 dB nHL. BrainX software (developed by study coauthor Dr. Jing Xiang) was used for stimulus delivery [22, 23]. …”

“…A standard protocol for data acquisition as described in our previous studies [22, 23] was used. MEG signals were recorded with a 275-channel whole head MEG system (VSM MedTech Ltd., Port Coquitlam, BC, Canada) in a magnetically shielded room (Vacuum-Schmelze, Hanau, Germany).…”