難治性疼痛のリハビリテーション研究

抄録

Goal-directed movements involve representative sensorimotor control, planning, and execution, both sequentially and cyclically. An optimal motor control is necessary to minimize jerk, torque change, variance, interaction torques. Disturbance of optimal motor control may cause or exacerbate pathological pain in patients with complex regional pain syndrome (CRPS). The present review article demonstrated abnormal kinematic feature in CRPS indicating sensorimotor disturbance and pain-related fear. Then, we also demonstrated rehabilitation strategy for them based on analyzing kinematic data. While, phantom limb pain is exacerbated through altered movement representations of their phantom limb, for example, ‘my phantom limb is frozen in one or more peculiar positions’. Previously study hypothesized that visual feedback using a mirror restored the voluntary movement representation of such a ‘paralysed’ phantom limb and simultaneously improved phantom limb pain. This observation generated a working hypothesis ‘distorted movement representation of a phantom limb induces pathological pain as the alarm sign of the limb abnormality'. In the present review article, we demonstrated process of verifying the working hypothesis by using the bimanual circle-line coordination task and rehabilitation with virtual reality system. We suggest the importance of evaluating the movement representations in a quantitative way, and that structured movement representations of the phantom limb are necessary for alleviating phantom limb pain.