Characterization of the spectral content of resting-state electroencephalographic activity in chronic migraine female patients

Abstract text (incl. figure legends and references)

Objective. Previous studies have reported neurophysiological differences between chronic migraine (CM) and healthy controls (HC). The aim of the current study is to evaluate how the CM condition affects the brain activity in women using spectral measures.

Methods. We have included 62 female subjects: 32 CM patients (age 34.50 (27.50, 39.00)) and 30 HC subjects (age 29.00 (26.00, 35.00)). Ten minutes of eyes-closed resting-state electroencephalographic (rsEEG) activity were acquired using a Brain Vision® equipment. The power spectral density (PSD) of rsEEG recordings was computed to assess the spectral content of the brain electrical activity. Nine spectral parameters were computed from the PSD: individual alpha frequency, transition frequency, median frequency (MF), spectral edge frequency, relative power (RP) in the conventional frequency bands, spectral entropy, Rényi entropy, Tsallis entropy, and Escort-Tsallis entropy.

Results. Statistically significant differences (p < 0.05, Mann-Whitney U-test) were found in the spectral content of PSD in terms of MF, and RP in beta 1 and beta 2 frequency bands. In addition, PSD irregularity, assessed by means of spectral entropy, Tsallis entropy, and Rényi entropy, showed differences between both groups. Furthermore, CM patients exhibited significantly higher values for MF, RP in beta 1 and beta 2 bands, spectral entropy, Tsallis entropy, and Rényi entropy than HC subjects, which suggests that CM induces an increase in the oscillatory activity in high-frequency bands and irregularity in rsEEG activity.

Conclusions. Our analyses showed that CM is associated with an increase in both high-frequency oscillatory activity and irregularity in rsEEG activity compared with HC. These findings could be exploited to provide further understanding on CM.