• Jilei Zhang, Yi-Lan Wu, Jingjing Su, Qian Yao, Mengxing Wang, Ge-Fei Li, Rong Zhao, Yan-Hui Shi, Ying Zhao, Qiting Zhang, Haifeng Lu, Shuai Xu, Zhaoxia Qin, Guo-Hong Cui, Jianqi Li, Jian-Ren Liu, and Xiaoxia Du.
• Shanghai Key Laboratory of Magnetic Resonance and Department of Physics, School of Physics and Materials Science, East China Normal University, 3663 North Zhong-Shan Road, 200062, Shanghai, People's Republic of China.
• J Headache Pain. 2017 Dec 1; 18 (1): 74.

BackgroundMigraine constitute a disorder characterized by recurrent headaches, and have a high prevalence, a high socio-economic burden and severe effects on quality of life. Our previous fMRI study demonstrated that some brain regions are functional alterations in migraineurs. As the function of the human brain is related to its structure, we further investigated white and gray matter structural alterations in migraineurs.MethodsIn current study, we used surface-based morphometry, voxel-based morphometry and diffusion tensor imaging analyses to detect structural alterations of the white matter and gray matter in 32 migraineurs without aura compared with 32 age- and gender-matched healthy controls.ResultsWe found that migraineurs without aura exhibited significantly increased gray matter volume in the bilateral cerebellar culmen, increased cortical thickness in the lateral occipital-temporal cortex, decreased cortical thickness in the right insula, increased gyrification index in left postcentral gyrus, superior parietal lobule and right lateral occipital cortex, and decreased gyrification index in the left rostral middle frontal gyrus compared with controls. No significant change in white matter microstructure was found in DTI analyses.ConclusionThe significantly altered gray matter brain regions were known to be associated with sensory discrimination of pain, multi-sensory integration and nociceptive information processing and were consistent with our previous fMRI study, and may be involved in the pathological mechanism of migraine without aura.

24 keywords...

hide…