Saccade behaviour in migraine patients

Voxel-based morphometry studies in migraine patients showed significant grey matter volume reduction in regions involved in the control of saccadic eye movements. We hypothesized that these changes would be reflected in dysfunctional saccadic behaviour.

Saccades were recorded by infrared oculography using three different paradigms (pro-saccade with gap, pro-saccade overlap and anti-saccade with gap). We compared the results for migraine patients (n = 80) with those for controls (n = 87).

No significant differences were found between migraine patients with (n = 46) and without (n = 34) aura. Migraine patients showed a saccadic behaviour that differed from controls in three respects. In migraine patients, the latencies in the pro-saccade with gap paradigm were borderline significantly longer. Moreover, in both the pro-saccade with gap and the pro-saccade overlap paradigm we observed a larger intra-individual variation of the latency in migraine patients. However, the biggest difference was that the patients who received migraine prophylactic therapy made significantly more anti-saccade errors in the anti-saccade with gap paradigm, suggesting that inhibitory saccade control is impaired in migraine patients depending on the severity of the migraine.

We suggest a deficient inhibitory control, reflecting an executive dysfunction in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex or a dysfunction in the cingulate cortex, is present in migraine patients.