Our objective was to contribute to the elucidation of changes in cerebral function of patients suffering from migraine. Twenty-six patients were examined where migraine was diagnosed (5 with aura and 21 without aura), and as a control group 27 healthy volunteers. The patients were examined during the intervals between attacks, at least 72 hours after an attack. In addition to standard pattern-reversal VEPs the authors used also two variants of motionnset VEPs and cognitive stimulation. Visually evoked cognitive potentials were tested either by using the „oddball“ paradigm – differentiation of coherent and non-coherent motion signalized by pressing a button or by so-called emotional passive event-related potentials were involved (passive follow up of alternate projection of pictures of the normal and electronically destroyed face in a pseudorandom order). The investigation revealed a normal reaction of the patients during stimulation of primary (striate) and associati ve extrastriate areas of the visual cerebral cortex (pattern reversal and motion-onset VEPs resp.). On examination of cognitive potentials significant changes were found only when so-called passive cognitive potentials were used, i.e. the reactions of the migraine patients did not have a smaller amplitude of the reaction to frequent (non-target) stimuli as compared with rare (target) stimuli, as it is usually the case in cognitive evoked potentials. The authors evaluated also the frequency spectrum of the EEG at rest, the parameters of which were normal in patients with migraine. The same reaction to a rare and frequent stimulus in the patients can be interpreted as defective inhibition of attention (habituation) during stimulation by an insignificant stimulus in a migrainous brain which supports some already existing data of this type recorded in the literature.

        Key words: migraine, visual evoked potentials (VEP), cognitive evoked potentials (ERP)