Accelerated brain ageing in migraine: a multilevel MRI-based brain-age modelling study

Abstract Migraine is increasingly recognized as more than just an episodic headache disorder—it often carries a profound burden marked by emotional and cognitive disturbances. Recent insights point towards a possible link between migraine and accelerated brain ageing, yet the specific brain regions affected and the clinical implications remain poorly understood. We investigated grey matter-based brain age using voxel-based morphometry in 110 preventive treatment–naïve patients with migraine and 70 healthy controls, based on T1-weighted MRI and a validated brain-age prediction framework trained on data from 1318 healthy individuals. Compared with controls, patients with migraine exhibited a significantly higher global brain-age gap [mean difference = 4.24 years; confidence interval (CI, 0.12, 8.36); P = 0.039; ηp² = 0.024]. Regionally, 66 out of 442 brain parcels—primarily within the prefrontal, frontal, cingulate, parietal and temporal cortices and the amygdala—showed elevated ageing patterns. Permutation-based canonical correlation analysis revealed a stable multivariate association between regional brain-age deviations and a combination of migraine-related clinical factors (headache frequency, painkiller usage and depressive symptoms), although individual factor contributions were variable. Functional annotation of the affected regions highlighted their roles in cognitive, emotional and perceptual processing. Together, these findings reveal that migraine is linked to widespread, regionally patterned brain ageing, mirroring the clinical and neurobiological complexity of the disease. This work not only deepens our understanding of migraine’s impact on the brain but also opens new avenues for exploring how timely intervention might protect brain health in this population.