• Claudia H Overath, Stephanie Darabaneanu, Marie C Evers, Wolf-Dieter Gerber, Melanie Graf, Armin Keller, Uwe Niederberger, Henrik Schäl, Michael Siniatchkin, and Burkhard Weisser.
• Institute of Medical Psychology, University Clinic of Schleswig-Holstein, Campus Kiel, Diesterwegstraße 10 - 12, 24113 Kiel, Germany. claudiah.overath@googlemail.com.
• J Headache Pain. 2014 Feb 14; 15 (1): 1111.

BackgroundMigraine is a disorder of central information processing which is characterized by a reduced habituation of event-related potentials. There might be positive effects of aerobic exercise on brain function and pain. The aim of this study was to investigate the influence of exercise on information processing and clinical course of migraine.Methods33 patients completed a ten-week aerobic exercise programme. To examine the influence of the treatment on information processing and attention, Trail Making Test (TMT) A and B, d2-Letter Cancellation Test (LCT) and recordings of the Contingent Negative Variation (CNV) were performed before and after the training.ResultsPatients showed a significant reduction of the migraine attack frequency, the iCNV-amplitude and the processing time for TMT-A and TMT-B after treatment. Moreover, there was a significant increase of the habituation and positive changes in parameters of attention (d2-LCT) after the training.ConclusionsThis study demonstrates that aerobic exercise programme influences central information processing and leads to clinical effects on the migraine symptomatology. The results can be interpreted in terms of an improvement of a dysfunctional information processing and a stimulus selection under aerobic exercise.

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