That is the finding of a study conducted by Noble Endicott, MD, of the New York State Psychiatric Institute. Results of the study were presented for the first time at the American Psychosomatic Society Annual Meeting held March 5-8, 2003, in Phoenix, Arizona.

The study was conducted as a preliminary test of the hypothesis that an individuals’ patterns of functional brain organization are causally related to their life-time health.

Since anomalous or unusual brain related behaviors or conditions deviate from the statistical average for the general population the patterns of brain organization with which they are associated are also assumed to deviate from those of the population norm. The number of these observable anomalous behaviors or conditions can be used as “representatives” or “markers” for the unobservable patterns of brain organization with which they are associated.

Two studies of different groups of subjects have found that anomalous brain conditions tend to be positively interrelated. That is, if an individual has one anomalous brain condition or behavior they are more likely to develop another than is a person with none. If they have two they are more likely, in the future, to develop a third than a person would be who had one or none, etc.

Thus, the number of an individuals anomalous brain conditions can be used as a way of defining or evaluating that person’s pattern of functional brain organization. Subjects with differing numbers of anomalous brain conditions can be arranged in a continuum of an increasing number of these conditions. This continuum (e.g. 0 anomalous brain conditions, 1,2,3,...8 or more) can be seen as a dimension reflecting an increasing vulnerability to environmental and/or genetic factors which have been associated with the precipitation of clinical conditions, in this care, migraine headaches.

The present study of 434 women with a life-time diagnosis of major depression found that those women who had no anomalous brain conditions had only a 9% chance of developing migraine, whereas 85% of the women with 8 or more anomalous brain conditions had migraine headaches.