Lack of age - dependent development of the contingent negative variation (CNV) in migraine children?

Stephan Bender 1, Matthias Weisbrod 2, Ulrike Just 1, Ute Pfüller 2, Peter Parzer 1, Franz Resch 1, Rieke Oelkers 1

 

1 Department for Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, 2 Psychiatric Department, University of Heidelberg, Germany

 

Background: Increased negativity of CNV in adult migraineurs is thought to reflect cortical hyperexcitability. CNV amplitude changes with age in healthy adults. Recently evidence emerged that this might not be the case for migraineurs. Our study investigates age-dependency of CNV during childhood age.

 

 

Methods: 76 healthy controls and 61 children with migraine without aura (IHS code 1.1) between 6 and 18 years were examined using an acoustic S1 - S2 - CNV - paradigm with 3s interstimulus interval.

 

 

Results: The amplitude of the late component of CNV as well as total CNV at Cz were significantly higher in migraineurs without aura than in controls. Healthy controls showed increasing amplitudes of CNV with age whereas in migraine children without aura amplitudes did not change. Thus group differences were reduced during adolescence.

 

 

Conclusions: Increased CNV negativity might reflect a biological vulnerability to migraine rather than being a result of chronification. Migraineurs seem to lack age - dependent development of CNV also during early age which supports the hypothesis of migraine as a maturation disorder.