Auditory Processing in Children with Migraine: A Controlled Study

TLDR

The study investigated central auditory processing in children with migraine versus headache‑free controls. Twenty‑eight children aged 8‑12 were tested with GIN, DPT, SSI, and NVDT to assess central auditory processing. Migraine children showed poorer performance on DPT, SSI, and NVDT, indicating deficits in temporal processing and selective auditory attention, while GIN performance was unchanged.

Abstract

<b>Background</b> This study aimed to investigate central auditory processing performance in children with migraine and compared with controls without headache. <b>Methods</b> Twenty-eight children of both sexes, aged between 8 and 12 years, diagnosed with migraine with and without aura, and a control group of the same age range and with no headache history, were included. Gaps-in-noise (GIN), duration pattern test (DPT), synthetic sentence identification (SSI) test, and nonverbal dichotic test (NVDT) were used to assess central auditory processing performance. <b>Results</b> Children with migraine performed significantly worse in DPT, SSI test, and NVDT when compared with controls without headache; however, no significant differences were found in the GIN test. <b>Conclusions</b> Children with migraine demonstrate impairment in the physiologic mechanism of temporal processing and selective auditory attention. In our short communication, migraine could be related to impaired central auditory processing in children.