Brain state monitoring for the future prediction of migraine attacks

© International Headache Society 2019. Background: Migraine attacks are unpredictable, precluding preemptive interventions and leading to lack of control over individuals' lives. Although there are neurophysiological changes 24-48 hours before migraine attacks, so far, they have not been used in patients' management. This study evaluates the applicability and the ability to identify pre-attack changes of daily "at home" electroencephalography obtained with a portable system for migraine patients. Methods: Patients with episodic migraine fulfilling ICHD-3 beta criteria used a mobile system composed of a wireless EEG device (BrainStation®, Neuroverse®, Inc., USA) and mobile application (BrainVitalsM®, Neuroverse®, Inc., USA) to self-record their neural activity daily at home while resting and while performing an attention task, over the course of 2 weeks. Standard EEG spectral analysis and event-related brain potentials (ERP) methods were used and recordings were grouped by time from migraine attacks (i.e. "Interictal day", "24 h Before Migraine", "Migraine day" and "Post Migraine"). Results: Twenty-four patients (22 women) recorded an average of 13.3 ± 1.9 days and had 2 ± 0.9 attacks. Twenty-four hours before attack onset, there was a statistically significant modulation of relative power in the delta (decrease) and beta (increase) frequency bands, at rest, and a significant reduction of the amplitude and inter-trial coherence measures of an attention event-related brain potential (P300). Conclusions: This proof-of-concept study shows that brain state monitoring, utilising an easy-to-use wearable EEG system to track neural modulations at home, can identify physiological changes preceding a migraine attack enabling valuable pre-symptom prediction and subsequent early intervention.