Overview

Migraine is a disabling and very common primary headache disorder characterized by recurrent moderate to severe mostly unilateral and pulsating headache. Although the treatment of migraine has improved in the last decade and several studies have shown the efficiency of headache specific medication, until today little is known about their central effect on pain processing.
This project therefore focuses on the effect of - in the treatment of migraine - routinely used medication on central pain processing systems.

As imaging techniques give us the opportunity to gain a better understanding of drug processes and help to understand where drugs reveal their therapeutic effect, we use functional resonance imaging (fMRT) to investigate the possible modulation of a standardized trigeminal-nociceptive stimulation by migraine specific medication. Furthermore, we investigate differences in pain processing between healthy volunteers and migraineurs.