• Gianluca Coppola, Antonio Di Renzo, Barbara Petolicchio, Emanuele Tinelli, Cherubino Di Lorenzo, Vincenzo Parisi, Mariano Serrao, Valentina Calistri, Stefano Tardioli, Gaia Cartocci, Jean Schoenen, Francesca Caramia, Vittorio Di Piero, and Francesco Pierelli.
• From the Department of Medico-Surgical Sciences and Biotechnologies (G. Coppola, M.S., F.P.), Sapienza University of Rome Polo Pontino, Latina; Research Unit of Neurophysiology of Vision and Neuroophthalmology (A.D.R., V.P.), IRCCS-Fondazione Bietti; Department of Human Neurosciences (B.P., E.T., V.C., S.T., G. Cartocci, F.C., V.D.P.), Sapienza University of Rome; Don Carlo Gnocchi Onlus Foundation (C.D.L.), Milan, Italy; Headache Research Unit, University Department of Neurology CHR (J.S.), Citadelle Hospital, University of Liège, Belgium; and IRCCS-Neuromed (F.P.), Pozzilli, Italy.
• Neurology. 2019 May 28; 92 (22): e2550-e2558.

ObjectiveWe investigated resting-state (RS)-fMRI using independent component analysis (ICA) to determine the functional connectivity (FC) between networks in chronic migraine (CM) patients and their correlation with clinical features.MethodsTwenty CM patients without preventive therapy or acute medication overuse underwent 3T MRI scans and were compared to a group of 20 healthy controls (HC). We used MRI to collect RS data in 3 selected networks, identified using group ICA: the default mode network (DMN), the executive control network (ECN), and the dorsal attention system (DAS).ResultsCompared to HC, CM patients had significantly reduced functional connectivity between the DMN and the ECN. Moreover, in patients, the DAS showed significantly stronger FC with the DMN and weaker FC with the ECN. The higher the severity of headache, the increased the strength of DAS connectivity, and the lower the strength of ECN connectivity.ConclusionThese results provide evidence for large-scale reorganization of functional cortical networks in chronic migraine. They suggest that the severity of headache is associated with opposite connectivity patterns in frontal executive and dorsal attentional networks.© 2019 American Academy of Neurology.

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