Do patients with chronic unilateral orofacial pain due to a temporomandibular disorder show increased attending to somatosensory input at the painful side of the jaw?

ABSTRACT:

Background

Patients with chronic orofacial pain due to temporomandibular disorders (TMD) display alterations in somatosensory processing at the jaw, such as amplified perception of tactile stimuli, but the underlying mechanisms remain unclear. This study investigated one possible explanation, namely hypervigilance, and tested if TMD patients with unilateral pain showed increased attending to somatosensory input at the painful side of the jaw.

Methods

TMD patients with chronic unilateral orofacial pain (n = 20) and matched healthy volunteers (n = 20) performed a temporal order judgment (TOJ) task indicated which one of two tactile stimuli, presented on each side of the jaw, they had perceived first. TOJ methodology allows examining spatial bias in somatosensory

SUBMITTER: Van Damme S 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5786881 | biostudies-literature | 2018

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature