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Updated: Jul 12, 2026
3D-Neuronavigation In Vivo Through a Patient's Brain During a Spontaneous Migraine Headache
Published on: June 2, 2014
Migraine versus tension-type headache in automatic emotional processing: A visual mismatch negativity study.
Yunliang Guo1, Shuo Zhao2, Xunyao Hou3
1Department of Geriatric Neurology, Shandong Provincial Hospital Affiliated to Shandong First Medical University, No 324 Jingwu Road, Huaiyin District, Jinan, Shandong 250021, PR China; Department of Neurology, Liaocheng People's Hospital and Liaocheng Hospital Affiliated to Shandong First Medical University, Liaocheng, Shandong 252000, PR China; Department of Geriatric Neurology, Shandong Provincial Hospital, Cheeloo College of Medicine, Shandong University, Jinan, Shandong 250012, PR China.
Migraine patients show impaired automatic emotional processing, unlike tension-type headache (TTH) patients. This impairment, measured by expression-related visual mismatch negativity (EMMN), suggests EMMN could help differentiate headache types.
Area of Science:
- Neuroscience
- Cognitive Science
Background:
- Headache diagnosis relies on subjective symptoms.
- Neurocognitive biomarkers offer objective assessment potential.
- Emotional processing deficits are suspected in primary headaches but not well-characterized.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate facial expression processing in migraine and tension-type headache (TTH).
- To analyze expression-related visual mismatch negativity (EMMN) in different headache groups.
- To determine if EMMN patterns can distinguish between migraine and TTH.
Main Methods:
- Recruited 73 headache patients (migraine with aura, migraine without aura, TTH) and 27 controls.
- Administered mood and neuropsychological evaluations.
- Used an expression-related oddball paradigm with neutral, happy, and sad faces to assess automatic emotional processing via EMMN.
Main Results:
- All headache patients exhibited cognitive impairment, particularly in attention/execution.
- Migraine patients (MA and MwoA) showed significantly diminished early and late EMMN amplitudes compared to controls and TTH.
- Healthy controls displayed a difference between sad and happy EMMN, which was absent in headache groups.
Conclusions:
- Migraine is associated with more severe impairment in automatic emotional processing than TTH.
- EMMN deficits in migraine include absent elicitation and loss of emotional bias.
- EMMN shows potential as a biomarker for discriminating migraine from TTH and diagnosing unspecified headaches, requiring further validation.
