Zoom and enhance! Migraine mechanisms revealed by fancy MRI

• Feb 9, 2025 • by Paul Ingraham
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Weekly nuggets of pain science news and insight, usually 100-300 words, with the occasional longer post. The blog is the “director’s commentary” on the core content of PainScience.com: a library of major articles and books about common painful problems and popular treatments. See the blog archives or updates for the whole site.

Tohyama et al. used next-gen 7T MRI to very closely examine the heads of 60 migraine patients. 7T is for “7 Tesla,” a measurement of magnetic field strength, and more magnet means more detailed pictures. These are rare and expensive machines, much more powerful than common 1.5T MRI, and even the high-end 3T MRI available in fancier radiology departments.

So … zoom and enhance! 🔍 🧠 In this study, 7T MRI revealed microscopic but clear abnormalities in the white matter (nerve insulation) of the trigeminal nerve root.

Also, PET scans showed neuroinflammation.

There’s clearly something wrong with the trigeminal system in these folks. When you look close enough. With the right tools. With enough Teslas.

Progress! There were some great comments about this one on Facebook, if you want to dig in deeper than I have here.