title: No abnormalities of intrinsic brain connectivity in the interictal phase of migraine with aura.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  Functional neuroimaging studies have shown hyperresponsiveness of cortical areas to visual stimuli in migraine patients with aura outside of attacks. This may be a key feature in the initiation of aura episodes and possibly also migraine headache attacks. It is unknown if cortical dysfunction is present at rest, i.e. in the absence of any external stimuli. Functional magnetic resonance imaging is a powerful technique for evaluating resting state functional connectivity, i.e. coherence of brain activity across cerebral areas. The objective of this study was to investigate resting-state functional brain connectivity in migraineurs with aura outside of attacks using functional magnetic resonance imaging.
  
  
  METHODS
  Forty patients suffering from migraine with visual aura and 40 individually age and gender matched healthy controls with no history or family history of migraine were investigated. Following advanced denoising, the data were analyzed both in a hypothesis-driven fashion, testing for abnormalities involving 27 different brain areas of potential relevance to migraine with aura including the cortical visual areas, the amygdala and peri-aqueductal grey matter, and in a data-driven exploratory fashion (dual regression) in order to reveal any possible between-group differences of resting state networks. Age, gender, attack frequency and disease duration were included as nuisance variables.
  
  
  RESULTS
  No differences of functional connectivity were found between patients and controls.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  The previously reported increased cortical hyperresponsivity in the interictal phase of migraine with aura is unlikely to be caused by abnormalities of intrinsic brain connectivity. The interictal migraine aura brain may be abnormally functioning only during exposure to external stimuli.
authors.affiliation: Danish Headache Center and Department of Neurology, Glostrup Hospital, Faculty of Health and Medical Sciences, University of Copenhagen, Glostrup, Denmark.
authors.forename: A
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Hougaard
authors.forename: F M
authors.initials: FM
authors.lastname: Amin
authors.forename: S
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Magon
authors.forename: T
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Sprenger
authors.forename: E
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Rostrup
authors.forename: M
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Ashina
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D054022:Cerebrum / Q000503:physiopathology*; D063132:Connectome; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008279:Magnetic Resonance Imaging; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D020325:Migraine with Aura / Q000503:physiopathology*; D055815:Young Adult
keywords: aura; functional magnetic resonance imaging; intrinsic connectivity; migraine; resting state