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Migraine aura: retracting particle-like waves in weakly susceptible cortex

Markus A. Dahlem¹ and Nouchine Hadjikhani²

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1. TU Berlin, Institut fuer Theoretische Physik
2. HMS/MIT/HST Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging, MGH-NMR Center

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Document Type:

Manuscript

Date:

Received 11 July 2008 07:04 UTC; Posted 16 July 2008

Subjects:

Biotechnology, Neuroscience

Tags:

• spreading depression
• pattern formation
• nonlinear dynamics
• migraine

Abstract:

Cortical spreading depression (SD) has been suggested to underlie migraine aura. Despite a precise match in speed, the spatio-temporal patterns of SD and aura symptoms on the cortical surface ordinarily differ in aspects of size and shape. We show that this mismatch is reconciled by utilizing that both pattern types bifurcate from an instability point of generic reaction-diffusion models. To classify these spatio-temporal pattern we suggest a susceptibility scale having the value σ=1 at the instability point. We predict that human cortex is only weakly susceptible to SD (σ<1), and support this prediction by directly matching visual aura symptoms with anatomical landmarks using fMRI retinotopic mapping. We discuss the increased dynamical repertoire of cortical tissue close to σ=1, in particular, the resulting implications on migraine pharmacology that is hitherto tested in the regime (σ>>1), and potentially silent aura occurring below a second bifurcation point at σ=0 on the susceptible scale.

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2 comments

George Somjen on 30 July 2008 18:28 UTC

This is an original and important addition to the theory of spreading depression itself, and also to its relation to migraine aura.

George Somjen on 30 July 2008 18:30 UTC

This is an important and original theoretical treatment illuminating certain as yet unexplained aspects of spreading depression, its propagation, and its relationship to migraine aura.

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This document is licensed to the public under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License

How to cite this document:

Dahlem, Markus and Hadjikhani, Nouchine. Migraine aura: retracting particle-like waves in weakly susceptible cortex. Available from Nature Precedings <http://hdl.handle.net/10101/npre.2008.2070.1> (2008)

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