Location-Specific Disruption of the Body Schema in Chronic Low Back Pain.
Paul Teillet, Lucette Toussaint, Romain David and 3 others
PMID 42769780WHAT IT FOUND
People with chronic low back pain were slower to judge left/right in trunk movement images than matched controls, by 239±225 ms on average.
Accuracy was not lower, hand judgments were unchanged, and task scores did not track pain intensity.
Key findings
01In the trunk laterality task, people with chronic low back pain had response times 239±225 ms longer than controls.
02In the hand laterality task, response time did not differ between the pain and control groups.
03Pain intensity, pain area, and the multidimensional clinical response index were not significantly correlated with laterality judgment performance.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for PTs
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What it does not show
The study included 19 participants per group and recruited from one center, so the result may not apply broadly. It was cross-sectional, so it cannot show that chronic low back pain caused the slower responses. Pain was rated subjectively and was mostly moderate, so it may not have captured a link between pain intensity and task performance. Some trunk movements, such as kickboxing and capoeira, may have been unfamiliar to participants.
The easy way to misread this
Do not conclude that chronic low back pain causes a clinically important body schema deficit or that motor imagery treatment will help. The study was cross-sectional, accuracy was not reduced, and no task score correlated with pain intensity, pain area, or the multidimensional clinical response index.