Authors: Péter Faragó, Nikoletta Szabó, Eszter Tóth, Bernadett Tuka, András Király, Gergő Csete, Árpád Párdutz, Délia Szok, János Tajti, Csaba Ertsey, László Vécsei, Zsigmond Tamás Kincses
Source: Brain Topography, March 2017, Vol. 30, Issue 2, 281-289
Abstract
The pathomechanism of cluster headache (CH) is not entirely understood, but central and peripheral components were suggested. A recent report showed that transcranial magnetic stimulation measured cortical excitability was increased in the hemisphere ipsilalteral to the pain. In the current study we set out to investigate the amplitude of resting brain fMRI activity to find signatures of the increased excitability. High resolution T1 weighted and resting state functional MRI images were acquired from seventeen patients with CH in pain free period and from twenty-six healthy volunteers. Patients’ data were normalized (e.g. inverted along the midsagittal axis) according to the headache side. Independent component analysis and a modified dual regression approach were used to reveal the differences between the resting state networks. Furthermore, the timecourses were decomposed into five frequency bands by discrete wavelet decomposition and were also re-regressed to the original data to reveal frequency specific resting activity maps. Two of the identified resting state networks showed alterations in CH. When the data were inverted to have patients’ headaches on the left, the ipsilateral attention network showed increased connectivity in 0.08–0.04 Hz frequency band in the in CH group. In the same dataset, cerebellar network showed higher functional connectivity in 0.02–0.01 Hz range in the ipsilateral cerebellum. When the data of patients having headache on the left were inverted to the right, similar increased signal was found in the ipsilateral attention network in 0.08–0.04 Hz band. The cerebellar network showed increased connectivity in the cerebellum in 0.02–0.01 Hz band in patients. The Fourier analysis of these area revealed increased power in CH at all cases. Our results showed alterations of brain functional networks in CH. The alterations of resting state activity were found in the hemisphere ipsilateral to the pain, signifying the altered cortical processing in the pathomechanism of CH.
Download and read entire article at Brain Topography.