Although there had been occasional references to the visual aura of migraine even in ancient medicine, little attention was given to the phenomenon until the first half of the nineteenth century when French authors began to describe it. In the medicine of English-speaking countries, apart from a few descriptions, it went largely unnoticed until the British Astronomer Royal, Sir George Airy, des...

Migraine affects the cortical physiology and may induce dysfunction both ictally and interictally. Although visual symptoms predominate during aura, other contiguous cortical areas related to less impressive symptoms are also impaired in migraine. Answers from 72.2% migraine with aura and 48.6% of migraine without aura patients on human faces and objects recognition, colour perception, proper n...

Near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) is a noninvasive system for the real-time monitoring of the concentration of oxygenated (O2Hb) and reduced (HHb) hemoglobin in the brain cortex. O2Hb and HHb concentrations vary in response to cerebral autoregulation. Sixty-eight women (14 migraineurs without aura, 49 migraineurs with aura, and 5 controls) performed breathholding and hyperventilation during NIR...

The evaluation and management of athletes presenting with clinical features of migraine headache with aura in the setting of sports-related head trauma is challenging. We present a case report of a 15-yr-old boy with a history of migraine with visual aura that developed acute visual disturbance and headache after a head injury during an ice hockey game. The patient underwent comprehensive asses...

Square-wave gratings with particular spatial characteristics induce visual illusions. Patients with migraine are particularly susceptible to these illusions and report discomfort. Their discomfort tends to be greater when the gratings are illuminated by red light, a tendency not shown by controls. Gratings that induce illusions have been found to impair the recognition of optically superimposed...

To the best of our knowledge, persistent visual symptoms, lasting months or years without evidence of infarction, a rare complication of migraine with aura, has been reported in only 20 patients. We report the case of a 43-year-old woman with a 31-year history of migraine with typical visual aura. At presentation, she experienced a visual aura in her right hemifield followed by a pulsating head...

Glioblastoma (GBM) is a highly malignant brain tumor. The GBM tumor mass contains a unique cell population, GBM stem cells (GBM-SCs), which possess the self-renewal, tumor initiating and tumor progression. FGF1B is the major transcriptional variant of FGF1 in GBM. In our recent study, we demonstrated the FGF1B transcript is up-regulated in self-renewing GBM cells. In order to study GBM-SCs, we ...

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE The aura phase of migraine is associated with focal blood flow changes, but it has been largely unknown whether these changes are correlated to changes in the cerebral metabolism. METHODS Eight patients required carotid angiography for evaluation of transient neurological attacks. Cerebral blood flow (CBF) results, angiography, and clinical observations subsequently sug...

OBJECTIVE  To evaluate whether patients with migraine are at increased risk of perioperative ischemic stroke and whether this may lead to an increased hospital readmission rate. DESIGN  Prospective hospital registry study. SETTING  Massachusetts General Hospital and two satellite campuses between January 2007 and August 2014. PARTICIPANTS  124 558 surgical patients (mean age 52.6 years; 5...

The question whether symptom-free migraine patients show cognitive impairments compared to matched control subjects is addressed, and also whether migraine patients show transient cognitive impairments induced by an attack. The Neuropsychological Evaluation System (NES2) was administered once in an interictal period and twice within 30 h after different migraine attacks. Since cognitive impairm...