Psychophysiological characteristics of headache patients.

Migraine, muscle-contraction headache patients, and non-headache controls were physiologically assessed during self-selected 'stressful' and 'relaxing' imagery in headache and non-headache states. Musculoskeletal (frontalis, bilateral temporalis), vascular (heart rate, bilateral temporal artery pulse volume), and autonomic (skin conductance response) measures failed to differentiate the groups on resting response levels--in both headache and non-headache states. 'Stressful' imagery elicited greater reactivity than 'relaxing' imagery in all three response systems, regardless of headache type. However, a group by condition interaction eventuated only for the electromyographic measures, indicating that the muscle-contraction patients were significantly more reactive during stressful imagery than migrainers and controls.