TY - JOUR
T1 - Relieving phantom limb pain with multimodal sensory-motor training
AU - De Nunzio, Alessandro Marco
AU - Schweisfurth, Meike Annika
AU - Ge, Nan
AU - Falla, Deborah
AU - Hahne, Janne Mathias
AU - Gödecke, Kim
AU - Petzke, Frank
AU - Siebertz, Mathias
AU - Dechent, Peter
AU - Weiss, Thomas
AU - Flor, Herta
AU - Graimann, Bernhard
AU - Aszmann, Oskar
AU - Farina, Dario
N1 - © 2018 IOP Publishing Ltd.
PY - 2018/10/16
Y1 - 2018/10/16
N2 - Background: The causes for the disabling condition of phantom limb pain (PLP), affecting 85% of amputees, are so far unknown, with few effective treatments available. Sensory feedback based strategies to normalize the motor commands to control the phantom limb offer important targets for new effective treatments as the correlation between phantom limb motor control and sensory feedback from the motor intention has been identified as a possible mechanism for PLP development.Methods: Ten upper-limb amputees, suffering from chronic PLP, underwent 16 days of intensive training on phantom-limb movement control. Visual and tactile feedback, driven by muscular activity at the stump, was provided with the aim of reducing PLP intensity. Results: A 32.1% reduction of PLP intensity was obtained at the follow-up (6 weeks after the end of the training, with an initial 21.6% reduction immediately at the end of the training) reaching clinical effectiveness for chronic pain reduction.Conclusion: Multimodal sensory-motor training on phantom-limb movements with visual and tactile feedback is a new method for PLP reduction.Significance: The study results revealed a substantial reduction in phantom limb pain intensity, obtained with a new training protocol focused on improving phantom limb motor output using visual and tactile feedback from the stump muscular activity executed to move the phantom limb.
AB - Background: The causes for the disabling condition of phantom limb pain (PLP), affecting 85% of amputees, are so far unknown, with few effective treatments available. Sensory feedback based strategies to normalize the motor commands to control the phantom limb offer important targets for new effective treatments as the correlation between phantom limb motor control and sensory feedback from the motor intention has been identified as a possible mechanism for PLP development.Methods: Ten upper-limb amputees, suffering from chronic PLP, underwent 16 days of intensive training on phantom-limb movement control. Visual and tactile feedback, driven by muscular activity at the stump, was provided with the aim of reducing PLP intensity. Results: A 32.1% reduction of PLP intensity was obtained at the follow-up (6 weeks after the end of the training, with an initial 21.6% reduction immediately at the end of the training) reaching clinical effectiveness for chronic pain reduction.Conclusion: Multimodal sensory-motor training on phantom-limb movements with visual and tactile feedback is a new method for PLP reduction.Significance: The study results revealed a substantial reduction in phantom limb pain intensity, obtained with a new training protocol focused on improving phantom limb motor output using visual and tactile feedback from the stump muscular activity executed to move the phantom limb.
KW - Motor Training
KW - Phantom Limb Pain
KW - Sensory Feedback
U2 - 10.1088/1741-2552/aae271
DO - 10.1088/1741-2552/aae271
M3 - Article
C2 - 30229747
SN - 1741-2560
VL - 15
JO - Journal of Neural Engineering
JF - Journal of Neural Engineering
M1 - 066022
ER -