Increased Functional Activation of Limbic Brain Regions during Negative Emotional Processing in Migraine

View/ Open
Author
Veggeberg, Rosanna
Lemme, Jordan
Published Version
https://doi.org/10.3389/fnhum.2016.00366Metadata
Show full item recordCitation
Wilcox, Sophie L., Rosanna Veggeberg, Jordan Lemme, Duncan J. Hodkinson, Steven Scrivani, Rami Burstein, Lino Becerra, and David Borsook. 2016. “Increased Functional Activation of Limbic Brain Regions during Negative Emotional Processing in Migraine.” Frontiers in Human Neuroscience 10 (1): 366. doi:10.3389/fnhum.2016.00366. http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fnhum.2016.00366.Abstract
Pain is both an unpleasant sensory and emotional experience. This is highly relevant in migraine where cortical hyperexcitability in response to sensory stimuli (including pain, light, and sound) has been extensively reported. However, migraine may feature a more general enhanced response to aversive stimuli rather than being sensory-specific. To this end we used functional magnetic resonance imaging to assess neural activation in migraineurs interictaly in response to emotional visual stimuli from the International Affective Picture System. Migraineurs, compared to healthy controls, demonstrated increased neural activity in response to negative emotional stimuli. Most notably in regions overlapping in their involvement in both nociceptive and emotional processing including the posterior cingulate, caudate, amygdala, and thalamus (cluster corrected, p < 0.01). In contrast, migraineurs and healthy controls displayed no and minimal differences in response to positive and neutral emotional stimuli, respectively. These findings support the notion that migraine may feature more generalized altered cerebral processing of aversive/negative stimuli, rather than exclusively to sensory stimuli. A generalized hypersensitivity to aversive stimuli may be an inherent feature of migraine, or a consequential alteration developed over the duration of the disease. This proposed cortical-limbic hypersensitivity may form an important part of the migraine pathophysiology, including psychological comorbidity, and may represent an innate sensitivity to aversive stimuli that underpins attack triggers, attack persistence and (potentially) gradual headache chronification.Other Sources
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4960233/pdf/Terms of Use
This article is made available under the terms and conditions applicable to Other Posted Material, as set forth at http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:dash.current.terms-of-use#LAACitable link to this page
http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:29002422
Collections
- HMS Scholarly Articles [17298]
Contact administrator regarding this item (to report mistakes or request changes)