Many futuristic movies and books depict humans with upgrades. Extra limbs or special abilities are common and some even create a hybrid of human and machine as in Robocop. This post will look at just how real that hybrid is and how technology and neuroscience are allowing this to happen.‘60 minutes’ in the US recently showed a segment … [Read more...]
Distilling the highs of cannabis-based pain relief
February 12, 2013 by 2 Comments
Doctors still debate about treating chronic pain with cannabis. At present, the evidence of benefit[1] does not clearly outweigh the long-term risks of cannabis to mental health.[2] Cannabis contains many chemicals but only delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) has significant pain-relieving properties. Unfortunately, THC is also responsible for the … [Read more...]
Tales of Tactile Trickery
January 29, 2013 by 1 Comment
While reading Oliver Sacks’ new book ‘Hallucinations’ one would expect to encounter stories of visual, auditory, and perhaps olfactory misperceptions. What caught my attention however, were the stories of tactile hallucinations. One can perhaps feel reasonably safe when hallucinations are just images dancing in your field of vision, but … [Read more...]
VBM – voxel-based morphometry or very bad measurement?
January 22, 2013 by 3 Comments
Brain imaging technology has become a big player in the world of pain research in the last 2 decades. In more recent years voxel based morphometry (VBM), which allows us to look at structural changes in the brain (specifically neuronal matter density) has produced some eyebrow raising research in chronic pain.It is this technology that produced … [Read more...]
One’s own name plays a special role in constructing spatial memory
January 18, 2013 by 1 Comment
We recognize things by name, so name is very important in order to know the world. Especially, one’s own name determines the existence of oneself by linking him/her to the social world. Thus own name is a special identifier for its owner. Reflecting this, psychologists have found that our own name has a great impact on mental processing. For … [Read more...]
Shared mechanisms in bodily illusions and imagined movements
January 11, 2013 by Leave a Comment
Imagine a cold winter day. Everything is covered by snow. You are getting ready to go out. Coat, scarf, wool cap, but on the table next to the main door there are your brand new gloves, one is blue the other one is red. How do we choose which glove corresponds to which hand? Most people automatically prepare, or imagine, moving one hand into the … [Read more...]
What about people who do function WITH chronic pain?
January 8, 2013 by 13 Comments
Well, what about those? Most researchers would suggest there aren't many of them. A quick review on PubMed will only give you a few useful hits, however it is estimated that about 70% of all people suffering from chronic nonspecific musculoskeletal pain manage to stay functioning at work. In actual fact this may in many cases be for the better, … [Read more...]
Self-management for low back pain
January 3, 2013 by 6 Comments
I have had an interest in low back pain since the early stages of my career as a physiotherapist. My relatives, friends and patients complained about this condition and its recurrence even after receiving treatment. At that time, I was intent on finding a “cure” for this condition. I often browsed the literature to find the causes and possible … [Read more...]
Grin and bear it: A surprisingly effective strategy to manage stress
December 21, 2012 by 4 Comments
When little can be done to help make stressful experiences more tolerable, age-old adages encourage us to just “grin and bear it.” Although smiling might appear too simple to be an effective solution, new research suggests that smiling through stressful situations does have a beneficial impact on physical health.In our recently published … [Read more...]
Physiotherapy in Nepal – We would like your support
December 18, 2012 by 1 Comment
Some of you may know that in March this year I swapped my Associate Professorship at The University of Queensland in Brisbane, Australia, for a volunteering position at Dhulikhel Hospital / Kathmandu University in Nepal. Let me first tell you something about the situation in Nepal, something about the hospital and physiotherapy, and then how you … [Read more...]
Does every pain have its own psychology?
December 14, 2012 by Leave a Comment
We have all experienced pain at some stage in our lives and anticipate pain as a consequence of injury. Despite this anticipation though we expect that with healing and time, pain will resolve. However, an acute pain can persist for many months and years, becoming chronic in its nature; a prospect difficult for many of us to imagine.Chronic … [Read more...]
Can another person feel my pain?
December 11, 2012 by 3 Comments
Seeing another person jam their fingers in the car door is enough to make even the toughest of us wince. But for some people, seeing another person hurt themselves causes more than just an “ooooo” or an “ahhhh”. It can trigger an actual real experience of pain: “mirror pain”.But how is this possible? The important thing to remember … [Read more...]
Good news for chronic nerve pain sufferers…but it could have been better
December 7, 2012 by Leave a Comment
This post is a republishing of a recent article in The Conversation by Michael Vagg:The announcement on Friday last week that pregabalin (Lyrica) made it onto the Pharmacutical Benefits Scheme (PBS) is a huge relief for sufferers of chronic nerve pain.It also means that the true cost of providing appropriate care to chronic pain … [Read more...]
Impaired spatial body representation in CRPS I
December 4, 2012 by 6 Comments
Imagine being offered one half of a Snickers Bar that on first glance was cut into two equal halves. Unless a machine bisected it, the right half would still be just a tiny bit larger. Why is that? Roughly said, the brain’s hemispheres are responsible for different functions. The right hemisphere is specialized in spatial abilities. When asked to … [Read more...]
Treat the pain, mend your brain?
November 27, 2012 by 7 Comments
Living with chronic pain can be miserable. Not only are there the nagging aches and pains of every day life, but there might also be forgetfulness, anxiety, depression, or difficulty concentrating as well.Researchers don’t yet know whether these ‘cognitive deficits’ are caused by pain itself, or whether it’s naturally more forgetful, … [Read more...]
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