Epilepsy, headache, and chronic pain

Epilepsy and pain, especially headache disorders, including migraine, can frequently co-occur. Over the last decades, increasing evidences pointed to cortical hyperexcitability, spreading depression, and ion channels abnormalities as common substrates of pain and epilepsy. Nevertheless, several questions remain unanswered, with specific focus on phenotypic-genotypic correlations of several mutations, including those associated with familial hemiplegic migraine, where epilepsy prevalence depends on the region of the ion channel affected by the mutation. In this chapter we present evidences regarding shared mechanisms of epilepsy and pain, highlighting effects of antiepileptic drugs as therapeutic targets for both disorders.