Relationship between Precipitating Agents and Neurophysiological Abnormalities in Migraine

Abstract

The particular mechanisms of migraine anticipation by different precipitating agents are still unknown. The contingent negative variation (CNV) was recorded in the premenstrual and ovulation phases of the cycle in both rest and stress conditions in 17 migraine and 15 healthy women. In migraineurs a significant increase of amplitude of the initial CNV component in the premenstrual phase compared with ovulation was observed. During both the ovulation and premenstrual phases both migraineurs and controls demonstrated a significant increase of the CNV amplitude on stress. The increase of the amplitude on stress in the premenstrual phase was more pronounced in migraineurs. This study shows that stress and menstrual cycle are associated with changes of the initial CNV amplitude, probably indicating a higher probability of migraine attacks.

Anticipatory processes under academic stress: An ERP study

“…Previous studies found that higher CNV was associated with relatively higher stress and arousal levels (Brown, Fenwick, & Howard, 1989;Nagai et al, 2004;Tecce, 1972). The results of a study by Siniatchkin et al (2006) also showed that healthy women under experimental achievement stress had increased iCNV amplitude compared with those under control conditions. More interestingly, studies found that high-trait anxious individuals had a greater CNV than lowtrait anxious individuals who performed at comparable levels (Ansari & Derakshan, 2011;Glanzmann & Froehlich, 1984).…”

“…Previous CNV studies examined clinical samples with anticipatory deficits, such as schizophrenia (Wynn et al, 2010); posttraumatic stress disorder (Kimble, Ruddy, Deldin, & Kaufman, 2004) and migraine (Siniatchkin, Averkina, & Gerber, 2006;Siniatchkin, Gerber-von, Darabaneanu, Stephani, et al, 2011;Siniatchkin, Sandor, Schoenen, & Gerber, 2003); motor disorders, such as Parkinsonism (Oishi, Mochizuki, Du, & Takasu, 1995); or attention deficits, such as attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (Banaschewski et al, 2003). Electrophysiological studies also revealed that CNV can be modulated by stress and anxiety in otherwise healthy samples.…”

Pain Perception during Menstrual Cycle

“…Hormonal fluctuations may in fact facilitate the "hypervigilance pattern," which subtends increased response to multimodal stimuli in migraine or FM, whose female prevalence is well known [37]. In fact, other event-related potentials (e.g., contingent negative variation) appear to vary in migrainous and nonmigrainous women in relation to menstrual phases [38], exhibiting enhanced levels of cortical arousal during perimenstrual phase. The general impression emerging from the few human studies exploring menstrual cycle fluctuations by neurophysiological methods is that subtle changes in neuromodulation of sensory perception may subtend increased pain sensitivity with a transient prevalence of excitatory versus inhibitory influences.…”

Migraine triggers and habituation of visual evoked potentials

“…While fluctuations over the migraine cycle likely account for intra-subject variability, there is no unanimously accepted explanation for the between-subject differences (8,9). It has been shown that stress is able to increase event-related potentials by decreasing habituation to a greater degree in migraine patients than in healthy subjects (10), and just before a migraine attack (11). In theory, there could be multiple connections between stress and abnormality of cortical evoked potentials.…”