Monday, March 07, 2011

Lorimer Moseley

Lorimer Moseley from Australia is a PT and pain researcher who has published dozens of papers investigating pain, rubber hand illusion, and all sorts of motor imagery ideas.

It's great to find this interview from last year on YouTube. There is no video, as it was a radio interview, but it's on YouTube nonetheless. About an hour altogether.

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4.

WELL worth a listen, if you have pain, deal with it, and don't quite fathom it.
WELL worth a listen, if you are a clinician who treats people who have it.

2 comments:

Jason DiCola said...

Hey Diane, I know I always ask a lot of questions, but it's only cause I think you know a lot of answers :). Anyway, in listening to the first video, Lorimer mentions the study of the violinist and the pain threshold between their string fingers and bow hand fingers. Now I haven't read the study (but would like to if I can find it) but his explanation for the lower pain threshold in the string finger is a psychological one based on fear/anxiety relating to the ability to successfully continue playing the violin. How likely is it that these research subjects actually felt that much fear in a controlled laboratory setting? Maybe this is mentioned in the actual paper, but how likely is it that the lower pain threshold is more of a property of injuring highly represented sensory maps? I don't doubt the role of psychological factors on pain, but it feels like a half answer in this case. I wonder if there are comparative studies on pain thresholds on highly represented maps (but not of a skilled/important finger, but more so of just a very frequently stimulated finger doing a mundane task) and then compare pain threshold to normally represented maps of the other hand. I imagine this would negate much of the psychological factors that could confound any differences. What do you think? Perhaps I've just read too much Ramachandran and am spoiled by neurological explanations to psychological phenomenon.

Thanks, Jason (Jaycola)

Diane Jacobs said...

Hi Jason,
Good question. I do not know the answer to that. I would propose you ask him directly - you can access him at his blog, twitter or facebook at bodyinmind.com