Neurophysiological Model of Migraine Pathophysiology: Bringing the Past into the Future

Neurophysiology has the primacy in unravelling the functional characteristics of the migraine brain in vivo. This book has summarized how the migraine brain has been explored with available neurophysiological methods. In general, there is a global dysfunction of the sensory information processing for all sensory modalities. These neurophysiological changes involve multiple neural correlates and the pattern may fluctuate with the phase of the migraine cycle or severity. Given the multiple anatomical and functional peculiarities found in the migraine brain, we think it is time to define migraine as a ‘biobehavioural organic maladaptive central pain’. The future challenges in this field include neural correlates of neurophysiological aberrancy, functional characterization of ‘the dark side’ of the brain (e.g. hypothalamus and brainstem), genotype-phenotype interaction, composite biomarkers of migraine and pertinent application in precision medicine.