What is a migraine?

Migraine is one of the primary headache syndromes. It is a genetic disorder. The vast majority of people who have migraine have inherited it from their parents or grandparents. What's happening in people who have migraine is that they have periodic dysfunction of what we call the sensory system, the system that we have in our brain to pick up inputs from outside. Yeah. So during a migraine attack, patients will get pain. But besides pain, they will also feel very sensitive to light, sounds, smells. They often want to sit still because they don't like movement, and a lot of these patients also get nausea and vomiting. Yeah. It is best thought of as a complex neurological disorder in which you have become overly sensitive to sensory input. So the light doesn't shine any brighter and you don't like it. The sounds aren't any louder, but you don't like them. And similarly, pain is just another one of those sensory modalities, and patients are in pain despite the fact that there is no obvious cause for pain externally. There's nothing else that's dysfunctional that should lead to pain. As I pointed out earlier on, it is a dysfunction within the brain that is driving the whole process.