Interictal Abnormalities of Neuromagnetic Gamma Oscillations in Migraine Following Negative Emotional Stimulation

Abstract

Here, we aimed to investigate brain activity in migraineurs in response to emotional stimulation. Magnetoencephalography (MEG) was used to examine 20 patients with episodic migraine (EM group), 15 patients with chronic migraine (CM group), and 35 healthy participants (control group). Neuromagnetic brain activity was elicited by emotional stimulation using photographs of facial expressions. We analyzed the latency and amplitude of M100 and M170 components and used Morlet wavelet and beamformers to analyze the spectral and spatial signatures of MEG signals in gamma band (30–100 Hz). We found that the timing and frequency of MEG activity differed across the three groups in response negative emotional stimuli. First, peak M170 amplitude was significantly lower in the CM group than in the control group. Second, compared with the control group, the average spectral power was significantly lower in the EM group and CM group at M100 and M170. Third, the average spectral powers of the M100 and M170 in the CM group were negatively correlated with either HAM-D scores or migraine attack frequency. No significant differences across groups was found for positive or neutral emotional stimuli. Furthermore, after negative emotional stimuli, the MEG source analysis demonstrated that the CM group showed a significantly higher percentage of amygdala activation than the control group for M100 and M170. Thus, during headache free phases, migraineurs have abnormal brain activity in the gamma band in response to negative emotional stimuli.Trial Registration: ChiCTR-RNC-17012599. Registered 7 September, 2017.

Altered Effective Connectivity in Migraine Patients During Emotional Stimuli: a Multi-frequency Magnetoencephalography Study.

“…Moreover, migraine can induce negative emotions, and negative events can aggravate migraine. Our ndings reveal that the migraine suffers showed more de cits in the processing of emotional stimuli than did the healthy control group, which consists with the conclusion from a previous study [12].…”

“…This sensitivity might be related to the prioritized automatically perception of threaten detection [29,30]. Several pieces of research provided evidence the migraineurs show abnormal neural in response to negative facial expressions [12,13]. This suggests that migraineurs might process negative emotional perceptions abnormally during the interictal phase.…”

“…We selected 90-180ms after triggering from MEG data as a time window to analysis. All data were ltered with band-pass lters at pre-de ned bandwidths of delta (1-4 Hz), theta (4-8 Hz), alpha (8-12 Hz), beta (12)(13)(14)(15)(16)(17)(18)(19)(20)(21)(22)(23)(24)(25)(26)(27)(28)(29)(30), gamma (30-90 Hz), and we use a 50Hz notch lter to eliminate power-line noise. All data were proceeded additional analyses in these bands separately.…”

“…This phenomenon can be interpreted as a differential process of emotional facial contents preferentially and intensively towards unpleasant stimuli. Most recently, it has been proposed that patients with migraine showed altered brain activation under negative emotion stimuli using functional MRI (fMRI) and electroencephalogram (EEG) [11][12][13]. In these articles, migraineurs were found stronger activation in the visual cortex, cerebellum, and amygdala than healthy volunteers.…”

Altered effective connectivity in migraine patients during emotional stimuli: a multi-frequency magnetoencephalography study

“…In addition, de Tommaso et al pointed that stimuli images with different emotional content could interfere with pain perception and cortical response in migraine patients [40]. Moreover, studies show that the migraine patients had abnormal neural activation in response to negative facial expressions [20,41]. This suggested that the migraine patients might process negative emotional perceptions abnormally during the interictal phase.…”