RECENT RESEARCH HAS CONFIRMED THAT PATIENTS WITH MIGRAINE, THOSE WHO HAVE SO-CALLED AURA, AND THOSE WHO DO NOT, THE SCAN SHOWED CHANGES IN BRAIN STRUCTURE. RESEARCH HAS INCLUDED ANALYSIS OF 19 STUDIES OF MIGRAINE. ALL HAVE USED SOME OF THE DIAGNOSTIC IMAGING METHOD, AND ALL HAVE CONFIRMED THAT PEOPLE WITH MIGRAINES HAVE A HIGHER PERCENTAGE OF THE OBSERVED CHANGES IN THE BRAIN THAN THOSE WHO DO NOT HAVE THESE PAINFUL HEADACHES.
In all headache and in migraine are needed diagnostic tests, although the prevalent opinion is that there is no diagnostic method that is isolated with certainty be proved beyond a migraine attack.
Migraine is a benign recurring headache and it is not a symptom of anything else, but the causes of migraine headaches are numerous. Modern research suggests that people who suffer from migraines have structural brain changes detected by imaging diagnostic methods, particularly in the region of the cortex, the center of pain and other sensations in the body: it was discovered that their part of the somatosensory cortex thinner by 21%.
Yet it is unclear whether these changes in the brain caused by migraines, or are the result of the migraine.
Your question also applies to many developmental disorders (autism, dyslexia, schizophrenia, etc). In my opinion, the brain changes, even anatomical, are secondary to lower level CNS or sensory malfunctions, or to symptoms. When challenged, neuroscientists or scanners will concede this, but nevertheless they do not address this ambiguity but proceed with generating more and more uninterpretable brain changes.
Very respected Anthony, thank you for your involvement in the debate and I can only say that I fully agree with your opinion.
Sometimes a question is best answered by a question.
Do we, or should we, treat the MRI findings or the symptoms of the migraine patients?
Such issues arise when we start thinking through technology, and, expect technology to do the hard work for us.
Of course, technology does not oblige in this fashion.
Medicine is not an appendage of technology, while technology is, and will forever remain, an appendage of medicine.
Dear colleague Vinod Kumar Gupta, you are no doubt in the right attitude. However, doctors practitioners will not, in the future, exclude the use of supplementary diagnostic methods in clinical medicine in all of its domains, and depending on the findings (emphasis is placed on positive findings), researchers as doctors in practice are at least in a position to try to answer the question causally -positive relationships of the described changes and symptoms of the present disease. The topic of the migraine headache is particularly challenging from this point of view, especially because of its epidemiology, so every good answer to this question is very desirable. I am certainly very grateful to you for engaging in the discussion and on the given answer.
Dear Milorad:
To have a true and realistic feel of the cart–before– the–horse strategy that MRI and allied technology has placed before migraine research – both theory and therapy – I suggest a reading of my 1997, 2009, 2010, 2011 articles, before you pen a reply. If you reply rapidly before the reading, well that is your choice. Nobody has challenged sensibly these and about a hundred more of my critiques. I hope you will.
Less than 1 percent of migraine patients merit an MRI scan. You know this as well as I know this.
A good doctor knows how to treat/investigate, the better doctor knows when to treat/investigate, and the best doctor knows when NOT to treat/investigate. This applies both to daily practice and to research.
Otherwise, the mystery of migraine would have been resolved decades ago.
Best.
- Badges
- Science topic