Neurology and Therapeutics

Background and Aims: Migraine is a phasic disease, with ictal, preictal and postictal phases. Aberrant static restingstate functional connectivity (rs-FC) has been demonstrated in migraine sufferers. However, there are few studies on dynamic rs-FC during migraine. This study aimed to investigate the differences of static and dynamic rs-FC between ictal and pre- or postictal phases of migraine.

 

Methods: Migraineurs in the ictal (n=16), preictal (11) and postictal (10) phases underwent 3T MRI. We compared the static and dynamic rs-FC among subjects in the ictal preictal and postictal phases using region-of-interest to region-of-interest analyses of 91 cortical, 17 subcortical and 30 infratentorial areas.

 

Results: Analysis of static rs-FC showed no significant differences among migraineurs in the ictal, preictal and postictal phases. Analysis of dynamic rs-FC demonstrated that migraineurs in the ictal phase had significantly less connectivity between right thalamus and right insular cortex, between left PAG and right interior frontal gyrus, and six other region-of-interest pairs than migraineurs in the preictal phase (Figure 1), as well as significantly less connectivity between the left thalamus and left cerebellum and six other region-of-interest pairs than migraineurs in the postictal phase.

 

Conclusions: In our study, dynamic rs-FC analysis revealed significantly different connectivity pairs between migraineurs in the ictal and pre- or postictal phases. Our study also revealed that the migraine brain dynamically

changed rs-FC during the preictal, ictal and postictal phases.