Cluster headaches are a type of headache whose severity is important. It has been described that the pain of this type of headache is one of the most intense that the human being can endure without losing consciousness.
In this state, it is easy to imagine that the person who suffers from it will see their ability to do their daily activities diminished and it is also easy to sense that their quality of life will be clearly reduced. However, scientists like to demonstrate their intuitions, and that is why Miriam Torkamani and her collaborators at the UCL Institute of Neurology and The National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery (London) have carried out an experiment with which they can demonstrate that suffering from cluster headaches it can significantly alter various facets of the patient’s life.
Cluster headaches appear in episodes that can last from 15 minutes to three hours and can recur over a day or two. There are people who suffer from this problem chronically from their first episode, and there are other patients who may have seizure-free periods of up to several years.
The study by Torkamani and his team included a group of 11 people with chronic cluster headaches, another group of patients with this disease in its episodic form, and both were compared with a third group of healthy participants. All of them carried out various memory and executive function tests, in addition to answering questionnaires on cognitive complaints, mood, anxiety and quality of life.
The results, recently published in Headache (2015), showed that in general, people who suffer from cluster headaches tend to perceive that their cognitive functioning is worse. But it is not just that they believe it. Although no differences were found in intelligence or in cognitive aspects such as verbal fluency or response inhibition, the headache groups did perform worse than healthy individuals in working memory tasks, such as those that involve maintaining and manipulating information ‘online ‘until a certain action is performed.
Although the authors assume that the experiment has its limitations (for example, the size of the groups is small), they encourage further research on this topic given its importance and the great negative impact it has on those affected. Similarly, it seems that the ideal would be to provide them with tools that allow them to improve their cognitive abilities and compensate as much as possible for the damaging effects of pain on their mental functioning.
Marisa Fernández, Senior Neuropsychologist, Unobrain
