• Gianluca Coppola, Antonio Di Renzo, Emanuele Tinelli, Chiara Lepre, Cherubino Di Lorenzo, Giorgio Di Lorenzo, Marco Scapeccia, Vincenzo Parisi, Mariano Serrao, Claudio Colonnese, Jean Schoenen, and Francesco Pierelli.
• Research Unit of Neurophysiology of Vision and Neurophthalmology, G.B. Bietti Foundation-IRCCS, Via Livenza 3, 00198, Rome, Italy. gianluca.coppola@gmail.com.
• J Headache Pain. 2016 Dec 1; 17 (1): 100100.

BackgroundResting state magnetic resonance imaging allows studying functionally interconnected brain networks. Here we were aimed to verify functional connectivity between brain networks at rest and its relationship with thalamic microstructure in migraine without aura (MO) patients between attacks.MethodsEighteen patients with untreated MO underwent 3 T MRI scans and were compared to a group of 19 healthy volunteers (HV). We used MRI to collect resting state data among two selected resting state networks, identified using group independent component (IC) analysis. Fractional anisotropy (FA) and mean diffusivity (MD) values of bilateral thalami were retrieved from a previous diffusion tensor imaging study on the same subjects and correlated with resting state ICs Z-scores.ResultsIn comparison to HV, in MO we found significant reduced functional connectivity between the default mode network and the visuo-spatial system. Both HV and migraine patients selected ICs Z-scores correlated negatively with FA values of the thalamus bilaterally.ConclusionsThe present results are the first evidence supporting the hypothesis that an abnormal resting within networks connectivity associated with significant differences in baseline thalamic microstructure could contribute to interictal migraine pathophysiology.

27 keywords...

hide…