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How does vasodilation trigger migraine in the trigeminovascular system?
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How does vasodilation trigger migraine in the trigeminovascular system?

Understanding the Trigeminovascular System and Migraine Pain

Overview of the Trigeminovascular System

  • The trigeminovascular system plays a crucial role in the perception of migraine pain, involving first-order trigeminovascular neurons located in the trigeminal ganglion.
  • These neurons innervate the meninges and associated blood vessels, transmitting nociceptive signals to second-order neurons in the brain stem.
  • The signals are then relayed to higher brain regions, including the thalamus and cortex, leading to the conscious experience of migraine pain.

Mechanisms of Activation

  • Activation of this system triggers the release of potent vasodilators such as CGRP (Calcitonin Gene-Related Peptide) and PACAP (Pituitary Adenylate Cyclase-Activating Polypeptide).
  • These substances promote neurogenic inflammation and cause vasodilation specifically within meningeal arteries.
Video description

The trigeminovascular system is a physiological network involving the trigeminal nerve, cranial blood vessels, brain stem, thalamus, and cortex. Its main function is to transmit nociceptive signals that ultimately generate the perception of migraine pain. The process begins with dilation of meningeal arteries, leading to activation of neurons in the trigeminal ganglion, which propagate nociceptive signals to the brain stem. These signals then ascend to neurons in the thalamus and eventually reach the cortex, where they are processed and perceived as migraine pain. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Additional Information ──────────────────────────── https://www.nejm.org/doi/10.1056/NEJMra1915327 See our T&Cs: https://sciani.com/terms-conditions/ ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Science Animated ──────────────────────────── http://www.sciani.com/ https://twitter.com/Sci_Ani https://www.facebook.com/scianimation/ https://sciani.com/terms-conditions/ ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ #migraine #migrainepain #neuroscience ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━