All subjects enrolled in the study were native Italian speakers. All subjects gave informed consent to participate. Local ethics committee approval of the study was obtained. All patients were tested interictally at least 3 days after the last and before the next migraine attack. The following battery of neuropsychological tests assessing executive functions was administered to all subjects. Frontal Assessment Battery (FAB): consists of 6 subsets exploring different functions (conceptualization, mental flexibility,

motor programming, sensitivity to interference, inhibitory control, and environmental autonomy) related to the frontal lobes, originally designed for evaluating the frontal lobe function Erastin in neurodegenerative disorders;[17] The Trail Making Test (TMT): investigates visual attention and set shifting. It consists of 2 parts: A and B. The subject’s task is to connect with a line 25 consecutive targets on a sheet of paper in the shortest possible time. In TMT-A, the 25 targets are numbers (1, 2, 3, etc) while in TMT-B targets are both numbers and letters, and the subject must alternate them in ascending order (1, A, 2, B, etc). The performance measure taken into account is the time necessary to the subject to complete the task;[18] Controlled Oral Word Association Test (COWAT): this consists of 3

word-naming trials beginning with F, A, and S; it gives a measure of verbal fluency which is associated with frontal lobe functions;[19] Stroop Test: primarily measures executive selective attention, see more as the participant must ignore the distraction of the noncongruent color words during the

test phase. Both time of execution and number of errors were taken into account;[20] Boston Scanning Test: this is a letter cancellation test used to investigate attention; the subject has to mark all the letters A randomly arranged together with other letters;[21] Hamilton Depression Scale: the first version of this depression rating test was used.[22] Age and education adjusted scores according to Italian standardized normative data were used Acesulfame Potassium for the analysis of the neuropsychological results. In migraineurs, we used also the Migraine Disability Assessment Questionnaire (MIDAS) to assess the severity of disability related to migraine. It is a simple 5-item self-administered questionnaire, and it gives information on lost time from work or school, household work, and leisure activities. The MIDAS score is a sum of the number of lost days in these 3 domains. The validity of this tool was tested in a population-based sample of headache sufferers.[23] All patients and controls underwent MRI scans with a 1.5 Tesla (T) superconducting magnet system (GE, Milwaukee, WI, USA).