Reduced Threshold for Inhibitory Homeostatic Responses in Migraine Motor Cortex? A tDCS/TMS Study

Background and Objective Neurophysiological studies in migraine have reported conflicting findings of either cortical hyper‐ or hypoexcitability. In migraine with aura (MwA) patients, we recently documented an inhibitory response to suprathreshold, high‐frequency repetitive transcranial magnetic sti...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Headache 2014-04, Vol.54 (4), p.663-674
Main Authors: Cosentino, Giuseppe, Brighina, Filippo, Talamanca, Simona, Paladino, Piera, Vigneri, Simone, Baschi, Roberta, Indovino, Serena, Maccora, Simona, Alfonsi, Enrico, Fierro, Brigida
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Adult
Brain
Evoked Potentials, Motor - physiology
Female
Headaches
Homeostasis - physiology
homeostatic plasticity
Humans
Male
metaplasticity
Migraine
Migraine Disorders - physiopathology
Motor Cortex - physiopathology
repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation
Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation
Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:Background and Objective Neurophysiological studies in migraine have reported conflicting findings of either cortical hyper‐ or hypoexcitability. In migraine with aura (MwA) patients, we recently documented an inhibitory response to suprathreshold, high‐frequency repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (hf‐rTMS) trains applied to the primary motor cortex, which is in contrast with the facilitatory response observed in the healthy subjects. The aim of the present study was to support the hypothesis that in migraine, because of a condition of basal increased cortical responsivity, inhibitory homeostatic‐like mechanisms of cortical excitability could be induced by high magnitude stimulation. For this purpose, the hf‐rTMS trains were preconditioned by transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS), a noninvasive brain stimulation technique able to modulate the cortical excitability state. Methods Twenty‐two MwA patients and 20 patients with migraine without aura (MwoA) underwent trains of 5‐Hz repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation at an intensity of 130% of the resting motor threshold, both at baseline and after conditioning by 15 minutes of cathodal or anodal tDCS. Motor cortical responses to the hf‐rTMS trains were compared with those of 14 healthy subjects. Results We observed abnormal inhibitory responses to the hf‐rTMS trains given at baseline in both MwA and MwoA patients as compared with the healthy subjects (P 
ISSN:0017-8748
1526-4610
DOI:10.1111/head.12249