New EEG Approaches to the Pathophysiology of Migraine

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Markus Ploner
• Subject Area: Human Cognitive and Systems Neuroscience ; Clinical Neurology; Neurosurgery and Neuroradiology
• Term: since 2025
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 554053166

Migraine is the most common neurological disorder in young adults, with significant effects on quality of life, health care systems, and societies. It is a cyclic disorder in which premonitory, aura, headache, and postdromal phases repeatedly incapacitate patients physically, mentally, and socially for many days. Although migraine management has significantly improved over the last decades, many patients do not achieve satisfactory improvement, indicating an unmet need for new treatments. Hence, understanding pathophysiological processes across the migraine cycle and developing clinically valuable biomarkers to guide treatment are core aims of contemporary migraine research. As changes of cerebral excitability across the migraine cycle appear to be a central feature of migraine pathophysiology, the non-invasive assessment of excitability might provide novel pathophysiological insights and further the development of biomarkers. To this end, we will use the most recent approaches to characterize brain activity using electroencephalography (EEG). We will perform 230 EEG recordings and combine cross-sectional and longitudinal approaches to assess brain activity across the migraine cycle. We will particularly assess the aperiodic component of EEG activity, which is increasingly recognized as a novel measure of the excitation/inhibition (E/I) ratio. Thereby, we aim to non-invasively determine changes in excitability across the migraine cycle. We will specifically test the hypothesis that EEG measures indicate higher excitability in patients with migraine in the interictal state as compared to healthy people. Moreover, we will test the hypothesis that excitability in patients with migraine further increases during the premonitory phase. In addition, we will determine whether it is possible to track excitability across the migraine cycle in individual patients using daily EEG measurements over the course of four weeks. Beyond that, we will analyze other recent EEG biomarker candidates for neuropsychiatric and pain disorders, including band-specific power after correcting for aperiodic brain activity, peak alpha frequency, and brain network measures. All project parts are designed to meet the highest standards of Open and Reproducible Science, including a timely multiverse analysis. Thus, the project is intended to provide novel pathophysiological insights and further the development of biomarkers using a cost-effective, broadly available, and scalable measure of brain activity.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants