Research topic: Epidemiology and Clinical characteristics of primary headaches

Overview

Our Outpatient Department has established an electronic database based on detailed questionnaires on headache characteristics, headache-specific impairment and psychosocial wellbeing. Patients are asked to complete a thorough baseline questionnare at the first visit complemented by an additional by the treating physician.

Inspired by a case of distorted body image ("Alice in Wonderland" syndrome) in a female patient with migraine, the prevalence of selceted sensory and neuropsychological phenomena which have anecdotally been associated with migraine was determined in this cohort of migraine patients with and without aura and compared with healthy volunteers with and without a history of primary headaches. We could identify several migraine trait symptoms related to migraine as such, migraine aura and both, such as cinematographic vision (movements are perceivec as a series of stills), metamorphopsia (distorted images) and inverted vision (see above). These findings illustrate that migraine is more than just head pain and aura symptoms, but a complex disorder involving multiple brain regions.

Key publications

Jürgens TP, Schulte LH, May A. Migraine trait symptoms in migraine with and without aura. Neurology. 2014 (in press)

Jürgens TP, Ihle K, Stork JH, May A. "Alice in Wonderland syndrome" associated with topiramate for migraine prevention. J Neurol Neurosurg Psychiatry. 2011; 82(2):228-9.