Research into the role of the brain in chronic pain
We recently got an email from the guys at Neuro Orthopaedic Institute, or NOI as they are more commonly known. Now, none of us at BiM are part of NOI but we like the stuff they do and thought that this latest venture was worth giving a shout out for. The feedback we got from people who attended has been great. This is what they did.... Tom … [Read more...]
Body image means different things to different people. To many it refers to how one feels about one's body. To us, it refers to how one's body feels to oneself and how one perceives its shape, orientation, agency and ownership. Hopefully you can see that body image is critical to pain, because pain is, we reckon, necessarily felt in one's body. … [Read more...]
I met a fellow called Max. He was impressive with his command of the facts. He does some cool studies. He's not one of the Luddies. And certainly not one of the hacks. That is what happens when one is a bit too low on sleep. Which I am. But Max is not. Max works in beautiful Oxford and has done some excellent work looking at the use of … [Read more...]
More than a century ago, Harvard Professor Charles Burnett described a set of experiments in which healthy volunteers moved their hands in front of a mirror(1). He reported that watching the reflection of their own bodies disrupted the movement and perceived position of their limbs. Since then, many philosophers and psychologists have used … [Read more...]
If only it was always this easy! Actually, if only it was EVER this easy. Still, there is nothing like an unorthodox approach to patient-clinician relationships to convince a patient that the feeling they have of their hand is absolutely, 100%, totally, a construction of the brain... and it seems to have caused quite a stir - thanks to Jeisea … [Read more...]
Mirror therapy has attracted a lot of attention recently, here are extracts from a paper reviewing some of the evidence. G. Lorimer Moseley[1], Alberto Gallace[2], Charles Spence[3] [1] Department of Physiology, Anatomy and Genetics and Pain Imaging Neuroscience Group, Le Gros Clark Building, Oxford Centre for fMRI of the Brain, University of … [Read more...]
The New England Medical Journal recently published an article on Mirror Therapy for Chronic Complex Regional Pain Syndrome Type 1 after Stroke (see below for a look at what they had to say). It seems to be a really good study. That said, I wish it wasn't published as a letter only, because it is hard to rule out all the usual threats to validity - … [Read more...]
Is that training diary doing anything?
One really cool aspect of using a software program like Recognise, is that you can keep tabs on whether or not patients actually do what we ask them to do. This is an important issue because any treatment that involves home exercises or training depends on people doing it! Historically, clinicians have used a training or home exercise diary to … [Read more...]