Regional homogeneity abnormalities in patients with interictal migraine without aura: a resting‐state study

Abstract

Previous studies have provided evidence of structural and task-related functional changes in the brains of patients with migraine without aura. Resting-state brain activity in patients with migraine provides clues to the pathophysiology of the disease. However, few studies have focused on the resting-state abnormalities in patients with migraine without aura. In the current study, we employed a data-driven method, regional homogeneity (ReHo), to analyze the local features of spontaneous brain activity in patients with migraine without aura during the resting state. Twenty-six patients with migraine without aura and 26 age-, education- and gender-matched healthy volunteers participated in this study. Compared with healthy controls, patients with migraine without aura showed a significant decrease in ReHo values in the right rostral anterior cingulate cortex (rACC), the prefrontal cortex (PFC), the orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) and the supplementary motor area (SMA). In addition, we found that ReHo values were negatively correlated with the duration of disease in the right rACC and PFC. Our results suggest that the resting-state abnormalities of these regions may be associated with functional impairments in pain processing in patients with migraine without aura. We hope that our results will improve the understanding of migraine.

Effects of long-term acupuncture treatment on resting-state brain activity in migraine patients: A randomized controlled trial on active acupoints and inactive acupoints

“…In previous neuroimaging studies, the ACC was the most consistently deactivated region in PET and fMRI migraine studies [35,36], and also had a decrease in gray matter [37,38]. Our research group verified that compared with healthy controls, migraineurs showed a significant decrease in ReHo values and amplitude of low-frequency fluctuation (ALFF) in the ACC [7,9], and showed aberrant functional connectivity which had the ACC involved [8,39]. In the present study, acupunctureinduced reduction in pain intensity ratings was negatively associated with increased average ReHo values in the ACC which illustrated that acupuncture treatment could promote pain reduction successfully by modulating the migraine-affected dysfunction region, the ACC, to some extent.…”

“…Our research group involving migraine without aura patients showed that abnormal structure and function was possibly associated with an impaired pain processing and modulatory process, such as in the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), insula, basal ganglia, thalamus, supplementary motor area (SMA), prefrontal cortex, etc. [7][8][9].…”

Macro- and microstructural alterations in migraine and cluster headache

“…While our results are solely structural in nature, given the strong coupling between structure and function in the brain, functional correlates also have to be considered. Our results can be paralleled by recent experiments showing altered resting state fMRI activity in migraine and CH patients [46,[147][148][149].…”

The role of BOLD-fMRI in elucidating migraine pathophysiology

“…Along this research line, Mainero and colleagues [35] have analyzed the alteration of baseline functional interaction within the periaqueductal gray matter networks. Yu and colleagues [36] have applied regional homogeneity method to analyze local temporal homogeneity of intrinsic fluctuation, and investigated the functional connectivity alterations of regions showing morphometric deficits during rest condition. In a recent RSfMRI study, we have demonstrated a decreased functional connectivity of FPN, known to be associated with executive functions, in MwoA patients without significant neuropsychological executive deficits [37].…”

“…These findings revealed that the observed FPN reduced connectivity may underlie daily living difficulties commonly reported by patients experiencing migraine. Studies to evaluate both structural and functional cortical measures was used by several authors [35][36][37][38][39][40], highlighting the impact of enduring migraine pain over brain function and contributing to the idea that long-term and high-frequency headache attacks may cause both structural and functional connectivity network reorganization. Furthermore, RS-fMRI findings may provide specific insights into compensatory functional reorganization mechanisms of the migrainous brain aimed at modulating both pain perception intensity and emotional/cognitive reaction to pain [39,40].…”