Migraines may slow memory loss
Sufferers show less cognitive decline as they age.
A migraine is not just a headache, it is an über-headache — a pounding, queasy, searing pain that can incapacitate its victims for hours on end. And as if the pain weren’t bad enough, sufferers were also thought to show diminished memory and verbal skills.
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Comments
I am a chinese girl.I have suffered from migraine for 7 years.But it doesn't influence my life. Have seen this article,I thought maybe it's a good thing.
Posted by: carol zhang | April 24, 2007 02:24 PM
Did the paper investigate the possibility that memory performance in migraine sufferers does not decline as rapidly or as much, simply because their memory was impaired to begin with? Young people with high-functioning memory skills will have a certain level of performance (say, recalling 4 (plus or minus standard deviation) items). As aging occurs this level of performance declines (say, 3 items).
But regardless of how old people get or how much their actual brains might decline, there is a limit to the sensitivity of a laboratory memory test to detect these changes. Isn't is possible that the smaller decline in migraine sufferers reflect that their memory was already impaired and (in the context of the particular memory test) could not decline much further, rather than there being some specific property of migraines that *causes* a smaller decline?
Posted by: Joseph Williams | April 25, 2007 12:13 AM