The Study of Time Perception in Migraineurs

Objective. The study aimed to explore the impairment of time perception in migraineurs. Background. Headache is the most common pain syndrome in middle-aged adults, and migraine is highly prevalent and severely disabling. Although the mechanisms of and the therapies for migraines have long been explored, less is known about the functional impairments associated with them, especially the impairment in time perception, that is, the ability to estimate the passage of time. Methods. In this study, we used a temporal reproduction task to assess the estimation of the duration of visual stimulus in 27 migraine patients. The stimulus was delivered at different intervals over the milliseconds and seconds range. Results. In the setting of an interstimulus interval for 1 second and an interstimulus interval for 5 seconds in the 600-millisecond-duration reproduction task, the migraineurs showed impairment in time perception, and in that they significantly overestimated the duration, as compared with the healthy subjects. When compared with the healthy controls for the 3-second and 5-second duration reproduction task, migraineurs in the setting of an interstimulus interval for 1 second and an interstimulus interval for 5 seconds did not show impairment in time perception. Conclusions. This study indicates that not only is time perception impaired in migraineurs, but that this impairment is exhibited for durations in the milliseconds range, and not the seconds range.