Monday, December 10, 2007

Recognise training – instability of findings

Recognise training refers to the restoration of laterality via the "Recognise" computer programme.

A clinician reader has noted in a patient with CRPS of early onset, that results with the Recognise programme are variable, i.e. the patient has good results one day, but poor the next. In short, there appears to be some instability in the laterality recognition process. This does not appear to occur in more long standing CRPS cases, where the laterality deficit is more entrenched.

I don’t know what causes this, but it would appear that the premotor to motor pathways that block laterality expression are still unstable, or said another way, the brain is still not quite sure that altering motor output is the best way to proceed and there may still be some competition for the best biological system (motor, sympathetic, endocrine etc) to defend the body. Early intervention is certainly supported by this finding.

We really enjoy hearing about what clinicians find. There are a number of groups carrying out research on laterality problems and their restoration and the clinical findings are very helpful for research design and understanding research findings.