Motor Imagery
Motor imagery is a brain training program designed to refresh and retrain the brain. It has been designed to be completed in stages based on extensive research on neuroplasticity and testing in people with persistent pain, including people with osteoarthritis and people who have had knee replacements. It is not harmful, although a small number of people can experience an increase in pain intensity at the start.
Who is it for?
- For people experiencing altered sensation like
- hypersensitivity
- numbness
- burning
- feeling your knee has changed size or is not part of you
- For people with persistent pain before or after knee replacement
- For people with pain that has spread
- For people with changed movements like
- walking with a limp
- difficulty bending your knee
- difficulty placing your foot in the right position
What are the different levels?
- Level 1 Left/ right orientation helps by refreshing the brain’s body maps.
- Level 2 Motor imagery helps to prepare your brain to create pain free movements.
How long does it take?
- Typically, each level takes two weeks or less to complete. But like everything we learn, it takes repeated practice to improve. Some people progress faster than others.
- Aim to practice every day, in a pain free way.
When will it make your pain better?
- Motor imagery forms part of the Kneed Pain Rehabilitation Program and with daily practice using your pain strategies, we aim for 50% improvement over 8 weeks.
- Some people respond immediately, some gradually and for others the benefits are noticed slower.
Level 1: Left/ Right Orientation
When we look at someone and they hold up their hand to wave, we can judge whether they are holding up their left or right hand.
We do this by using sensory maps in our brain to compare the person’s hand position to our position.
Some people are better at this than others naturally.
With persistent pain, these maps can be changed and become less precise. It can become harder to judge whether the hand is left or right with accuracy (being correct in your judgement) and speed (how long it takes to judge correctly). This can be specific to the body part with pain or it can affect the whole body.
Altered sensory maps may be contributing to why pain persists.
Left/ right orientation training works in 2 ways:
- To test whether you have difficulty with left and right judgements
- By practicing, it improves your brain’s ability to perform the judgements and improves the sensory maps
It is important to have good sensory maps before doing level 2 – motor imagery
Level 2 – Motor Imagery
Persistent pain often leads to changed movement patterns such as limping and stiff, protective movements getting into and out of chair and going up and down steps.
This leads to changes in the brain – one of these changes is imagined movement.
Normally, before we move, we think about and imagine what we are going to do. This helps improve speed and efficiency of movement as well as create a normal pattern.
Practicing motor imagery helps you understand whether your imagined movements have changed and is a treatment to help make your movements normal again. If you move normally, you are far less likely to experience pain.
