Research into the role of the brain in chronic pain
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...]
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...]
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...]
It is known that chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) patients often present unhelpful pain beliefs / behaviors, such as catastrophic thinking, depressive thoughts, passive coping strategies and fear of movement or kinesiophobia. Several of these beliefs and personality traits could potentially enhance pain perception, a process known as cognitive … [Read more...]
Motor actions are planned and steered from the brain. Input from eyes, muscles, joints, skin and vestibular system continuously inform the brain about actual movements. Simultaneously, this information is compared with the motion program (that what was predicted) in the brain, which is important for adjusting motor plans and ensuring smoothness of … [Read more...]
People are generally aware that pain can interact with motor performance, but pain-related motor dysfunctions are often put down to pain caused by the movement or fear of re-injury (e.g., fear-avoidance behaviors). The reality of things, however, is much more complex, and in a recent review paper (Mercier & Léonard, 2011; see also Bank et al. … [Read more...]
I’ve long had this kind of fascination with the placebo effect, it’s like a kind of magic that even grownups are allowed to believe in. In fact, it’s a magic trick so good that you’d considered a bit off if you didn’t believe in it. This being the case I found it a bit traumatic when I first read a review of placebo effects in clinical … [Read more...]
In every-day life, painful events do not occur in isolation but often comprise input from additional sensory modalities. As a consequence, certain sensory inputs, like the visual percept of a needle approaching our skin when getting an injection, are inseparably linked to pain. To reduce the pain, health professionals often advise us to not look at … [Read more...]
Jack Nicklaus is on the short list of the greatest golfers of all time, and I love his evocative quote, “before every shot, I go to the movies.” He never hits the ball (not even in practice) without first having a very sharp, focused picture of it in his head. He constructs a detailed image of the green, every dimple on the ball, the trajectory … [Read more...]
At the recent World Congress on Pain, there were enough exhibition stands to keep even the most mischievous amused. One of the most mischievous is Sarah Haag. Here she gives an account of the first of her investigations.....On day 2 of the biannual IASP conference in Milan, I decided to try out the latest and greatest in headache management … [Read more...]
When you expect an activity to evoke pain, when and why you decide to avoid or persist that activity? Until recently, this question has been mainly looked at from theories emphasizing the role of pain beliefs, with lots of research demonstrating that particularly fear of pain/movement makes people often avoid activity. Ignored in these theories, … [Read more...]
Perceived knee instability is a common problem in knee osteoarthritis (OA), affecting approx. 70% of patients.[1] Since knee instability is associated with greater pain, poor physical functioning and life quality a better understanding of the multifactorial nature of joint instability in knee (OA) is desirable.Several factors have been … [Read more...]
Every patient you see is likely to have a pelvis. Roughly 1/4 of women will have had some pelvic pain in the course of sport, childbirth, sex or urinating. Men are harder to pin down for exact numbers as it gets poorly diagnosed along with back pain and prostate problems but they have pelvic pain as well. Jane Bowering did a great job … [Read more...]
These days, academics routinely talk about their work and place pictures of themselves on web sites like bodyinmind.org. However, the picture we choose to show the world may reveal more about the way we see ourselves than we realise. Together with a great cast of researchers from my laboratory at UniSA and Flinders University I collected 5829 … [Read more...]
In my general physiotherapy practice about one in five patients come with complex pain, disability and loss. I love sorting out the pieces of the puzzle that creates these situations. A challenge is not to get lost amongst all the pieces. So I take the patient on a journey of discovery as I find all the pieces, so I can then help them see their … [Read more...]
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