Mental motor imagery and chronic pain: The foot laterality task

Abstract

Several lines of evidence suggest that mental motor imagery is subserved by the same cognitive operations and brain structures that underlie action. Additionally, motor imagery is informed by the anticipated sensory consequences of action, including pain. We reasoned that motor imagery could provide a useful measure of chronic leg or foot pain. Forty subjects with leg pain (19 bilateral, 11 right, and 10 left leg pain), 42 subjects with chronic pain not involving the legs, and 38 controls were shown 12 different line drawings of the right or left foot and asked to indicate which foot was depicted. Previous work suggests that subjects perform this task by mentally rotating their foot to match the visually presented stimulus. All groups of subjects were slower and less accurate with stimuli that required a greater degree of mental rotation of their foot. Subjects with leg pain were both slower and less accurate than normal and pain control subjects in responding to drawings of a painful extremity. Furthermore, subjects with leg pain exhibited a significantly greater decrement in performance for stimuli that required larger amplitude mental rotations. These data suggest that motor imagery may provide important insights into the nature of the pain experience.

Sensing the body in chronic pain: A review of psychophysical studies implicating altered body representation

“…In these tasks, participants make judgements as quickly as they can of whether images of hands or feet belong to the left or right side of the body. Consistent with neglect-like symptoms reported elsewhere (Frettloh et al, 2006;Lewis et al, 2010), patients with unilateral pain often take longer (Schwoebel et al, 2001) and are less accurate (Coslett et al, 2010) in performing the task when the pictured limb corresponds to their affected side. Likewise, the identification of left/right trunk rotation movements is also impaired in people with chronic back pain (Bray and Moseley, 2011;De Lussanet et al, 2012;Bowering et al, 2014).…”

Laterality judgments in people with low back pain – A cross-sectional observational and test–retest reliability study

“…Our findings of no group differences between the LBP and control groups and no association between leg pain and foot laterality judgments contradict previous studies that have reported impaired performance in LBP (Bray and Moseley, 2011;Bowering et al, 2014) as well as association between lower limb pain and impaired performance on foot laterality judgments (Coslett et al, 2010b;Stanton et al, 2012). Regarding trunk laterality, Bray and Moseley (2011) reported substantial impairments in the presence of LBP but no association with pain intensity, while Bowering et al (2014) found prominent impairment in those with both present and past history of LBP.…”

“…Impairments of this ability were previously demonstrated among several different pain related conditions in upper and lower limbs (Moseley, 2004;Coslett et al, 2010a;Coslett et al, 2010b;Reinersmann et al, 2010;Schmid and Coppieters, 2012) as well as in neck pain (Elsig et al, 2014). Decreased accuracy in laterality judgments of the trunk has also been demonstrated in people with LBP (Bray and Moseley, 2011;Bowering et al, 2014).…”

Using Balance Tests to Discriminate Between Participants With a Recent Index Lateral Ankle Sprain and Healthy Control Participants: A Cross-Sectional Study

“…The test for limb laterality has been used to investigate central changes in people with chronic pain. 35 An increased time to recognize the laterality of images is thought to be related to deficiencies in integration of information processing, working body schema, and premotor processes in the cortex. 36 The…”