Many of you may be aware of the process for making left/right judgments of hands. For those who aren’t, I’ll try to sum it up in brief. When trying to identify whether a picture of a hand is a left hand or a right, it’s thought that we access the cortical maps of our hands. The process is as follows; we pick a hand that we subconsciously … [Read more...]
Taking you on a roller-coaster ride with left right neck rotation judgments
May 7, 2013 by Leave a Comment
Should we turn away people with CRPS?
February 26, 2013 by 20 Comments
Two foods I love eating regularly (and that’s probably not a good thing for the latter) are tuna and ice cream. Thankfully, I have a firm grasp of the concept that some things just weren’t made for mixing.You might think this is a funny way to start a blog post on CRPS… but I promise you the Adelaide heat hasn’t fried my brain. I … [Read more...]
What grabs your attention?
October 23, 2012 by 5 Comments
Advertisers and marketers make a living out of grabbing your attention. They are not above using sudden loud noises (a salient physical stimulus or bottom-up attention grab). Nor do they shy away from top-down effects such as priming (defined as subtle suggestions made to the ‘subconscious’ brain to influence behaviour). But wait. Don’t … [Read more...]
The search for the ‘hurt’…..in the brain?
October 2, 2012 by 11 Comments
It was quite the line up at the recent IASP conference: Tracey, Apkarian, Flor, Crombez, Iannetti, Moseley …the groupies were gathering around a melting pot of pain-full ideas.One such thought provoking notion was the search for “the ‘hurt’ in the brain”, in association with a staunch refuting of the use of the ‘pain signature’ … [Read more...]
I didn’t do anything to deserve this….
September 13, 2012 by 9 Comments
And now you’re going to pay! Perceptions of injustice can emerge from a variety of conditions such as injury as the result of another’s actions – or in the case of not installing appropriate safety procedures – inactions - the experience of undeserved or irreparable loss or if the individual is exposed to a situation that transgresses human … [Read more...]
The Opioid Bank. It seems we are facing another global crisis!
August 14, 2012 by 14 Comments
Opioids. We all know what they are and that there are a lot of them going around, but it wasn’t until I was asked to write this blog on the information overloading review by Manchikanti and friends (2010) that I realised quite the extent. And to tell you the truth, it’s painfully scary!In a nutshell, well over half of the review pumped out … [Read more...]
Considering patient preferences when treating chronic NSLBP
July 17, 2012 by 9 Comments
In a past life I worked as an auto-electrician in a local car dealer. I was kept busy, as Australian build-quality ensures a steady flow of cars in need of repair. The process was relatively simple. A car would come in to the workshop, I would diagnose the problem, replace the faulty part and send it on its way. For the most part, it wouldn’t … [Read more...]
Skin: not as superficial as you think
June 15, 2012 by 29 Comments
A human foetus can do it, as can a newt, even a starfish has got it nailed; yet when it comes to you and I, regeneration is a struggle. That is not to say we can’t repair ourselves, we do so but the end result – a scar - can have a profound effect on the physical and psychological aspects of sufferer. Fiona Wood strives to change this. World … [Read more...]
Part two of Parallel worlds collide… and we all see stars, or astrocytes at least
May 22, 2012 by 3 Comments
Immune activation can produce some powerful and longlasting behaviour changes. Take single event learning for example (Ader and Cohen 1975) - the seminal study that proved that the immune system response could be behaviourally conditioned. Ader and Cohen (1975) paired sugar with an immunosuppressive agent in rats. When a foreign agent (sheep … [Read more...]
Parallel worlds collide… and we all see stars, or astrocytes at least
May 18, 2012 by Leave a Comment
Perhaps our language has always hinted at the involvement of glial cells in injury? And, when glial cells outnumber neurons in the brain by 20 to 1, it begs the question who is really in charge of synaptic activity (should that be plasticity) in the brain?I think it is fair to say that ever since the neuronal doctrine captured the imagination … [Read more...]
Pelvic Pain – all the fun stuff
May 9, 2012 by 21 Comments
Many of us here at BiM went to the Festival de NOI a couple of weeks ago. It was fab. However, we know that most of you couldn't make it and we thought we would briefly recap some of the talks so you can feel the passion for yourselves. Here is the first one.....This morning in the practice where I work, I overheard a male patient telling one … [Read more...]
Learning and Chronic pain part III
April 17, 2012 by 6 Comments
As we have discussed in part 1 and 2 of this series of posts, there is some evidence that classical conditioned responses play a role in chronic pain (Flor and Birbaumer 1994; Schneider, Palomba et al. 2004; Klinger, Matter et al. 2010). We have discussed the work of Flor and others showing that injury response systems (such as motor and autonomic) … [Read more...]
Learning and chronic pain Part 2
March 27, 2012 by Leave a Comment
In the previous blog Learning and chronic pain Part 1 we discussed a model for a way in which a neutral stimulus (conditioned stimulus or CS) when repeatedly paired with a biologically significant stimulus (the unconditioned stimulus or US) might come to elicit a conditioned response (or CR) that is similar to the response to the biologically … [Read more...]
Learning and chronic pain Part 1
March 22, 2012 by 7 Comments
The way we perceive and respond to various circumstances or ‘stimuli’ changes over time. This is called (drum roll) learning. Implicit learning is the term we give to learning that occurs outside of consciousness or awareness. Examples of implicit learning include non-associative learning (habituation and sensitisation) and associative learning … [Read more...]
Get moving for chronic pain research
February 10, 2012 by 4 Comments
WOO HOOOO! You can register for the most important cycling event of the year - UniSA's Ride for Pain. April 29th (the Sunday directly after the NOI2012 conference).There is something for everyone - a choice of the easy 35km on the flat, the 45km into the hills, or for the more serious - a 100km through the Adelaide Hills.Feast on some … [Read more...]
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