Journal of psychosomatic research
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This study investigated the effects of three types of laboratory stressors (stressful imagery, mental arithmetic, pain) on temporal artery, skeletal muscle, general autonomic [digital blood volume pulse (DBVP), spontaneous resistance responses (SRR's)] and self-report measures of distress in chronic migraine, mixed, muscle contraction and non-headache controls. All subjects were female, free of medication at time of testing and equated for age. Headache subjects reported a 19 year history of headache. ⋯ The results do not support the general autonomic dysfunction theory of migraine or the specificity hypothesis implicating an overreactive temporal artery or skeletal muscle response to stress in migraine and muscle contraction headache, respectively. Despite epidemiological research supporting the stress-headache relationship, the present results indicate that the psychophysiological mechanism underlying this relationship does not appear to involve abnormal tonic levels or phasic response to stress. It is argued that the temporal artery dilation response to pain questions the role of stress in triggering the two stage vasoconstriction-dilation mechanism of migraine and suggests the need to evaluate a four stage model as a potential psychophysiological mechanism underlying the stress-headache relationship.