• Zhaoxia Qin, Jingjing Su, Xin-Wei He, Shiyu Ban, Qian Zhu, Yangyang Cui, Jilei Zhang, Yue Hu, Yi-Sheng Liu, Rong Zhao, Yuan Qiao, Jianqi Li, Jian-Ren Liu, and Xiaoxia Du.
• Shanghai Key Laboratory of Magnetic Resonance and Department of Physics, School of Physics and Electronic Science, East China Normal University, 3663 North Zhong-Shan Road, 200062, Shanghai, People's Republic of China.
• J Headache Pain. 2020 May 6; 21 (1): 47.

BackgroundMigraine is a severe and disabling brain disorder, and the exact neurological mechanisms remain unclear. Migraineurs have altered pain perception, and headache attacks disrupt their sensory information processing and sensorimotor integration. The altered functional connectivity of sub-regions of sensorimotor brain areas with other brain cortex associated with migraine needs further investigation.MethodsForty-eight migraineurs without aura during the interictal phase and 48 age- and sex-matched healthy controls underwent resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging scans. We utilized seed-based functional connectivity analysis to investigate whether patients exhibited abnormal functional connectivity between sub-regions of sensorimotor brain areas and cortex regions.ResultsWe found that patients with migraineurs without aura exhibited disrupted functional connectivities between the sensorimotor areas and the visual cortex, temporal cortex, posterior parietal lobule, prefrontal areas, precuneus, cingulate gyrus, sensorimotor areas proper and cerebellum areas compared with healthy controls. In addition, the clinical data of the patients, such as disease duration, pain intensity and HIT-6 score, were negatively correlated with these impaired functional connectivities.ConclusionIn patients with migraineurs without aura, the functional connectivities between the sensorimotor brain areas and other brain regions was reduced. These disrupted functional connectivities might contribute to abnormalities in visual processing, multisensory integration, nociception processing, spatial attention and intention and dysfunction in cognitive evaluation and modulation of pain. Recurrent headache attacks might lead to the disrupted network between primary motor cortex and temporal regions and between primary somatosensory cortex and temporal regions. Pain sensitivity and patient quality of life are closely tied to the abnormal functional connectivity between sensorimotor regions and other brain areas.

35 keywords...

hide…