Treatment of migraines using neurofeedback

Migraines are a relatively frequent problem among the population; It is estimated that around 12% of adults in Western countries suffer from it on a regular basis, with a slightly more frequent disorder among women.

In addition, unfortunately, it is estimated that the majority of people who have developed migraine take about 2 years to receive a diagnosis, which makes the situation more damaging to their quality of life life.

Luckily, as research has been done on this type of headache, some effective therapeutic proposals have been discovered when it comes to managing the symptoms of migraine, and one of them is neurofeedback, form of intervention that we will talk about in this article.

• Related article: "The 13 types of headache (and their symptoms and causes)"

What are migraines?

migraine is a disorder characterized primarily by the occurrence of a headache of moderate or severe intensity, which affects about half of the head, and which can last for several hours. Along with this main symptom, other symptoms such as nausea and dizziness, sensitivity to light, and a phenomenon known as aura, characterized by being a disturbance of the senses, especially the vision.

On the other hand, migraine manifests its symptoms in episodes that normally appear several weeks after. separation between them, and when they produce a very sharp pain, they are capable of leaving the person incapacitated during several hours.

However, migraine is a relatively benign disease, since it does not cause death in a although it is true that it is associated with an increased risk of suffering cerebrovascular accidents. In any case, it is a sufficiently harmful problem that many people go to health professionals to treat this pathology, since in addition to causing pain, sometimes it means spending many hours in bed.

How is neurofeedback applied to the treatment of migraines?

The causes of migraines are complex, and not fully known to science, in part because there is a lot of variation between people. However, it seems that there is a combination of biological and genetic factors, and others that are of environmental origin.

In any case, what is known is that in the situations that trigger the symptoms of migraine there are various phenomena that can be controlled voluntarily by the person who has developed this disorder. The problem is that normally, these people do not know that a certain process that is taking place in their body is part of the causes of their migraine episodes. Neurofeedback is a way to become aware of what those factors are and learn to control them.

Explained in more detail, neurofeedback is a therapeutic intervention procedure that consists of measuring a person's electrical brain activity (applying sensors on his head, without making any incisions in the skin) and give him that information in real time, so he learns to regulate his activation patterns nervous.

It is a method that It is useful to help patients modulate their psychophysiological state according to their well-being goals., and for this reason, it has been shown to be effective in the treatment of various disorders, migraine being one of them.

In the case of migraine, through neurofeedback the person is trained to correct the amplitude of the frequencies of neural activation of certain parts of the cortex of the brain, which causes the symptoms to lose force. Through this strategy, which takes place over several sessions, migraines appear much less frequently, and usually through weaker symptoms. It has also been seen that its effects are maintained over time once the cycle of neurofeedback sessions has ended.

• You may be interested in: "Neurofeedback treatment for insomnia"

Bibliographic references:

• Bigal, M.E., Lipton, R.B. (2008). The prognosis of migraine. Current Opinion in Neurology. 21(3):pp. 301 - 308
• Dodick, D.W.; Gargus, J.J. (2008). Why migraines strike. Scientific American. 299 (2): p. 56 - 63.
• Global Burden of Disease Survey (2018). Global, regional, and national burden of migraine and tension-type headache, 1990–2016: a systematic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2016. The Lancet, 17(11):pp. 954 - 976.
• Matías-Guiu, J. et. to the. (2010). One-year Prevalence of Migraine in Spain: A Nationwide Population-Based Survey. Cephalalgia, 31(4): pp. 463 - 470.
• Walker, J.E. (2011). QEEG-guided Neurofeedback for Recurrent Migraine Headaches. Clinical EEG and Neuroscience. 42(1):pp. 59 - 61.