Nov 03, 2005
Mirror therapy for alleviating chronic pain
via Medgadget
McCabe and co-workers from the University of Bath and the Royal National Hospital for Rheumatic Diseases (RNHRD)have published in the journal Clinical Medicine the results of a study, which has investigated the use of mirror as a therapeutic mean to alleviate pain. The treatment consists in asking patients patients suffering from complex regional pain syndrome to carry out routine exercises in front of a mirror.
Results showed that more than half experienced pain relief during and after the exercise and further investigations indicated that even greater improvements can be achieved if the tasks are practiced beforehand.
McCabe explain these findings with the ‘cortical’ model of pain. According to this theory, the brain’s image of the body can become faulty, resulting in a mismatch between the brain’s movement control systems and its sensory systems, causing a person to experience pain when they move a particular hand, foot or limb.
Mirror therapy has proven effective also in the treatment of post-stroke hemiplegia as well as in the rehabilitation of "phantom limb" and visual hemineglect.
More to explore
Sathian K, Greenspan AI, Wolf SL. Doing it with mirrors: a case study of a novel approach to neurorehabilitation.
Neurorehabil Neural Repair. 2000;14(1):73-6.
| Ramachandran VS, Altschuler EL, Stone L, Al-Aboudi M, Schwartz E, Siva N. |
Can mirrors alleviate visual hemineglect? Med Hypotheses. 1999 Apr;52(4):303-5.
Altschuler EL, Wisdom SB, Stone L, Foster C, Galasko D, Llewellyn DM, Ramachandran VS.
Rehabilitation of hemiparesis after stroke with a mirror. Lancet. 1999 Jun 12;353(9169):2035-6.
00:45 Posted in Mental practice & mental simulation | Permalink | Comments (0) | Tags: Positive Technology, mental practice, motor imagery
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