New research suggests that individuals who suffer from chronic pain conditions often struggle with motor imagery tasks.
In a new study, researchers were particularly interested in assessing how subjects with chronic pain performed on an assessment called the Left Right Judgment Task (LRJT). The test involves showing subjects a picture of a hand or foot, and asking the subjects whether the hand/foot belongs to the left or right side of the body. This test is used to assess the capacity for motor imagery.
The researchers found that subjects with chronic pain performed significantly worse on the LRJT than the control group. Furthermore, these patients were also more slow to recognize when viewing images of the painful side of their own body compared to the their non-painful side. Interestingly, these effects were more pronounced in subjects suffering from facial or limb pain rather than spinal pain.
Conclusions
This study adds to the growing body of evidence linking chronic pain with impaired sensorimotor processing. Interestingly, while some studies have found that these correlations are more pronounced in patients with pain in the spine, this study actually found that the effects were less in the spine than in other regions of the body. Further research would be valuable to elucidate the differences between sensorimotor impairments in spine vs limb patients.
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