The perception of time in childhood migraine

Introduction: Migraine is a syndrome rather common in children. Recent results have accounted evidence of altered activity corresponding to the supplemental motor area in this pediatric population. Given the role of this region in the motor timing of supra-second temporal intervals, we hypothesized that time representation is abnormal in childhood migraine.

Subjects and methods: We compared time-processing abilities between 11 children with migraine and 11 age-matched healthy children, employing a time reproduction task in which subjects actively reproduced different supra-second temporal intervals.

Results: We show that children with migraine are less accurate (overestimate) and more variable in reproducing time intervals.

Conclusion: Results are discussed on the basis of the recent evidence about abnormal cortical and neurochemical activity in childhood migraine, but also in relation to a possible alteration of spatial attention mechanisms in this clinical population. The low number of patients examined represents a limit of this study and indicates that further investigation is needed.