Implicit motor imagery performance is impaired in people with chronic, but not acute, neck pain.

ABSTRACT:

Background

People with chronic neck pain have impaired proprioception (i.e., sense of neck position). It is unclear whether this impairment involves disruptions to the proprioceptive representation in the brain, peripheral factors, or both. Implicit motor imagery tasks, namely left/right judgements of body parts, assess the integrity of the proprioceptive represention. Previous studies evaluating left/right neck judgements in people with neck pain are conflicting. We conducted a large online study to comprehensively address whether people with neck pain have altered implicit motor imagery performance.

Methods

People with and without neck pain completed online left/right neck judgement tasks followed by a left/right hand judgement task (control). Participants ju

SUBMITTER: Wallwork SB 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7025709 | biostudies-literature | 2020

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature