Brain Foundation win for Dr Jason Ray!

Congratulations to Dr Jason Ray, who has received a 2022 Brain Foundation grant of $31,747 for his project titled, "An evaluation of the impact of CGRP monoclonal antibodies on the immune system in migraine". See Brain Foundation story and video or read more below about the project.

Migraine is, according to the World Health Organisation Global Burden of Disease studies, the second most disabling condition worldwide, and is estimated to affect 1.3 billion people.

Participants sought: Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) for Migraine in Multiple Sclerosis

See flier for this study on CBT for migraine in MS

Participants are sought for a research study investigating the use of Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) for migraine in Multiple Sclerosis (MS). EOI form link, and see more detail below.

We believe it is important to develop a therapy that is tailored to people with both migraine and MS. Our aim is to learn whether CBT is accepted by patients, and whether it has the potential to improve migraines, and in turn benefit quality of life, fatigue, sleep, anxiety, and depressive symptoms, which can occur more frequently for people with migraine and MS.

New drug hope for migraine sufferers

A recent study by Monash University neuroscientists has shown the effectiveness of a migraine drug called Erenumab (Aimovig) for chronic sufferers, which sadly remains unaffordable for most patients.

Involving 170 patients living with frequent, severe migraine attacks (chronic migraine) across three specialist headache centres in Australia, findings revealed that after being prescribed Erenumab, after three months 58.8 per cent had at least halved the number of ‘migraine attack’ days each month. This result was maintained at six months, with 50 per cent experiencing half the number of days with migraine that they had at baseline.

Participants sought: Migraine and visual disturbance, known as 'visual snow'

Visual snow can granulate visual perception as per the
right-hand image pictured here. Image: Medpage today

The problem

Currently, there is little understanding of the causes of Visual Snow (VS) and the relationship between VS and migraine.  As such, more research needs to be conducted to better understand the underlying mechanisms of these conditions.

A large portion of the brain is involved in vision and controlling the movement of the eyes. Other research has shown that simple eye movement tests and visual perception tasks can give important information about the mechanisms underlying neurological conditions.

What we want to find out

We wish to investigate whether differences in performance on eye movement and visual perception tests can account for the symptoms of VS and the differences in symptomology between VS and migraine.