migraine history

If you want a good overview of where the science of migraine has come from and where it’s going, you might want to check out an article in this month’s Scientific American.  It was written by Dr. David W. Dodick, a Professor of Neurology at the Mayo Clinic in Arizona and Dr. J. Jay Gargus, Professor of Physiology & Biophysics at the University of California Irvine.

The article provides a sweeping view of where migraine research has been, surprising developments in recent years, and where the research may take us in the years ahead.  Here’s an excerpt:

Not only has the specific understanding of blood flow changed, but so has the prevailing view of the root of migraine.  Migraine is now thought to arise from a disorder of the nervous system-and likely from the most ancient part of that system, the brain stem.  This newer insight has come mainly from studying two aspects of migraine: the aura, which precedes the pain in 30 percent of sufferers, and the headache itself . . . The most common form of aura is a visual illusion of brilliant stars, sparks, flashes of light, lightning bolts or geometric patterns, which are often followed by dark spots in the same shape as the original bright image . . . Aura appears to stem from cortical spreading depression-a kind of "brainstorm" anticipated as the cause of migraine in the writings of 19th-century physician Edward Lieving.  Although biologist Aristides Leão first reported the phenomenon in animals in 1944, it was experimentally linked to migraine only recently.

Read more about Why Migraines Strike from Scientific American.