Je. Palmer et Ep. Chronicle, COGNITIVE PROCESSING IN MIGRAINE - A FAILURE TO FIND FACILITATION IN PATIENTS WITH AURA, Cephalalgia, 18(3), 1998, pp. 125-132
Recent interest in cognitive processing in migraine has been based on
the assumption that cortical hyperexcitability in migraine with aura m
ay manifest itself in the form of response time advantages in migraine
as compared to controls. The study reported here attempted to replica
te and extend the findings of Wray and colleagues (Brain 1995;118:25-3
5). Using identical cognitive tasks, three experiments failed to find
differences between migraine with aura patients and controls: furtherm
ore, an additional group of patients without aura were also statistica
lly indistinguishable from controls with respect to response times. Er
ror rates were consistently high across experiments, indicating that s
ubjects were responding at or near chance levels. These findings cast
doubt on the utility of straightforward cognitive psychological method
s for the study of cortical hyperexcitability in migraine. Some theore
tical difficulties concerning the interpretation of response times in
the context of migraine pathophysiology are discussed.