Page 154 - Migraine, the heart and the brain

Chapter 8
Figure 1. Plot of reaction time for the perceptual organization task for migraine patients and healthy controls.
Attention task (ANT)
Alerting. Main effects of session [F(2,58) =15.21, p < 0.0001] and warning cue (present/ not present) [F(1,29) = 53.99, p < 0.0001] indicated that reaction time decreased over sessions and was faster with an alerting cue. Thus the standard alerting effect was replicated (18). However, no signi cant effect was found for group [F(1,29) < 1] or any interaction involving group [F(1,29 < 1]. The ANOVA of the error rates yielded no reliable effect, only a trend towards a group-by-cue interaction showing that migraineurs had a higher percentage of correct responses [F(1,32)=3.55, p= 0.069]. Orienting. Main effects of session [F(2,58) = 20.6, p < 0.0001] and warning cue (spatial vs. neutral) [F(1,29) = 291.2, p < 0.0001] indicated that reaction time decreased over sessions and was faster with spatial than with neutral cues. That is, the standard bene t of spatial orienting was replicated (17). However, no signi cant effect was observed for the group variable [F(1,29) < 1] or any interaction involving it. There was an advantage of spatial over neutral cues in both groups in the error-rate analysis [F(1,32) = 9.88, p = 0.004].
Executive control. Main effects of session [F(2,58) =18,57, p < 0.0001] and flanker congruency [F(1,29) = 207,2, p < 0.0001] showed reaction time decreased over sessions and was faster with congruent than with incongruent flankers. That is, the standard flanker-congruency effect was replicated (16). However, no signi cant effect was observed for the migraine vs. control variable [F(1,29) < 1] or any interaction involving it. The error rate analysis showed an effect on flanker congruency [F(2,58)= 6.13, p= 0.004], indicating that incongruent flankers induced more errors. Reaction times according to flanker type are presented in Table 4.
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