Comparing the Effectiveness of Neurofeedback and Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation (tDCS) in Reducing Symptoms of Women with Migraine

Background and Objective: Migraine is a neurological syndrome that involves one-way or two-way recurrent headaches with a moderate to severe severity and lasts from 2 to 72 hours. Chronic migraines occur for about 3 months and at least 15 days or more per month, with a global incidence of 1.4 to 2.2 percent. The aim of this study was to compare the effectiveness of neurofeedback and transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) in reducing symptoms of women with migraine.
Materials and Methods: This is a quasi-experimental study with pre-test, post-test, and follow-up for 2 months. The sample consisted of 20 migraine patients aged 15-55 years. Initial evaluation (entrance examination and exit), implementation of the Ahvaz Migraine Questionnaire (AMQ), and Blanchard Headache Diary (BHD) were performed. Patients were randomly assigned to the neurofeedback treatment group (N=10) and tDCS (N=10). Subjects of each group were evaluated 4 times consisting before intervention. The data were analyzed using SPSS 23 software.
Results: The results of Mann-Whitney U test indicated that there was no significant difference between the two treatments during the stages of evaluation in the severity, duration, and number of pain attacks per month. The results of Friedman test showed that there was a significant difference between the severity of headaches and the number of pain attacks in one month in the treatment groups during the stages of evaluation, but the duration of pain relief in each group in the evaluation steps did not differ significantly.
Conclusion: Neurofeedback and tDCS treatments reduce the symptoms of migraine disease, but there is no significant difference between the two treatments in terms of headache symptoms improvement.

Keywords: Migraine, Neurofeedback, Transcranial direct current stimulation