Cookies on this website

We use cookies to ensure that we give you the best experience on our website. If you click 'Accept all cookies' we'll assume that you are happy to receive all cookies and you won't see this message again. If you click 'Reject all non-essential cookies' only necessary cookies providing core functionality such as security, network management, and accessibility will be enabled. Click 'Find out more' for information on how to change your cookie settings.

See Legrain (doi:10.1093/awx188) for a scientific commentary on this article. Some patients with complex regional pain syndrome report that movements of the affected limb are slow, more effortful, and lack automaticity. These symptoms have been likened to the syndrome that sometimes follows brain injury called hemispatial neglect, in which patients exhibit attentional impairments and problems with movements affecting the contralesional side of the body and space. Psychophysical testing of patients with complex regional pain syndrome has found evidence for spatial biases when judging visual targets distanced at 2 m, but not in directions that indicate reduced attention to the affected side. In contrast, when judging visual or tactile stimuli presented on their own body surface, or pictures of hands and feet within arm's reach, patients with complex regional pain syndrome exhibited a bias away from the affected side. What is not yet known is whether patients with complex regional pain syndrome only have biased attention for bodily-specific information in the space within arm's reach, or whether they also show a bias for information that is not associated with the body, suggesting a more generalized attention deficit. Using a temporal order judgement task, we found that patients with complex regional pain syndrome processed visual stimuli more slowly on the affected side (relative to the unaffected side) when the lights were projected onto a blank surface (i.e. when no bodily information was visible), and when the lights were projected onto the dorsal surfaces of their uncrossed hands. However, with the arms crossed (such that the left and right lights projected onto the right and left hands, respectively), patients' responses were no different than controls. These results provide the first demonstration of a generalized attention bias away from the affected side of space in complex regional pain syndrome patients that is not specifically related to bodily information. They also suggest a separate and additional bias of visual attention away from the affected hand. The strength of attention bias was predicted by scores on a self-report measure of body perception distortion; but not by pain intensity, time since diagnosis, or affected body side (left or right). At an individual level, those patients whose upper limbs were most affected had a higher incidence of inattention than those whose lower limbs were most affected. However, at a group level, affected limb (upper or lower) did not predict bias magnitude; nor did three measures designed to assess possible asymmetries in the distribution of movements across space. It is concluded that inattention in near space in complex regional pain syndrome may arise in parallel with a distorted perception of the body.10.1093/brain/awx152_video1awx152media15495542665001.

Original publication

DOI

10.1093/brain/awx152

Type

Journal article

Journal

Brain

Publication Date

01/09/2017

Volume

140

Pages

2306 - 2321

Keywords

body representation, complex regional pain syndrome, pain, spatial attention, Adult, Aged, Attentional Bias, Case-Control Studies, Complex Regional Pain Syndromes, Female, Functional Laterality, Humans, Judgment, Male, Middle Aged, Space Perception, Visual Perception, Young Adult