Cerebral Cortex Advance Access published online on March 27, 2008
Cerebral Cortex, doi:10.1093/cercor/bhn032
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Homeostatic Metaplasticity of the Motor Cortex is Altered during Headache-Free Intervals in Migraine with Aura
1 Department of Clinical Neurophysiology, Georg-August University, 37073 Göttingen, Germany, 2 Department of Neurology, Christian-Albrechts University, 24098 Kiel, Germany
Address correspondence to Andrea Antal, PhD, Department of Clinical Neurophysiology, Georg-August University of Göttingen, Robert Koch Straße 40, 37075 Göttingen, Germany. Email: aantal{at}gwdg.de.
Preconditioning of the human primary motor cortex (M1) with transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) can shape the magnitude and direction of excitability changes induced by a subsequent session of repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS). Here, we examined this form of metaplasticity in migraine patients with visual aura and healthy controls. In both groups, facilitatory preconditioning of left M1 with anodal tDCS increased the mean amplitudes of motor-evoked potentials (MEPs) elicited in the contralateral hand, whereas inhibitory preconditioning with cathodal tDCS produced a decrease in amplitude. Following cathodal tDCS, a short train of low-intensity 5-Hz rTMS antagonized the suppression of the mean MEP amplitude in both groups. In contrast, the homeostatic effects of 5-Hz rTMS differed between groups when rTMS was given after anodal tDCS. In controls 5-Hz rTMS induced a marked decrease in MEP amplitudes, whereas in migraineurs rTMS induced only a modest decrease in MEP amplitudes, which were still facilitated after rTMS when compared with baseline amplitudes. These findings indicate that short-term homeostatic plasticity is altered in patients with visual aura between the attacks.
Key Words: metaplasticity • migraine • motor cortex • transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) • transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS)
Andrea Antal and Nicolas Lang contributed equally.
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