Graded Motor Imagery Hybrid

This hybrid, hands-on class will focus on treating people with a hypertensive nervous system and clinically “too hot to handle”. With the advent of pain neuroscience exploring issues associated with neuroplasticity, it has become increasingly clear that in a certain patient population, physical touch, and movement, essential for recovery, could pose a threat. This includes conditions such as complex regional pain syndrome (CRPS – old RSD), phantom limb pain, peripheral neuropathy, spinal cord injuries, spinal pain and more. With persistent input to the central nervous system and brain, various long-lasting changes occur including cell death, change in brain maps of the body, neurotransmitters, receptors, and various pathways associated with pain. These changes manifest themselves with clinical issues such as neglect, allodynia, hyperalgesia, mirror pains, spreading pain, widespread sensitization, and problems with laterality recognition. Physical testing of patients with pathological changes in their mapping will include two-point discrimination, pressure-pain threshold testing, nerve palpation, localization, graphesthesia, neurodynamics, laterality and mapping of body parts. The same neuroplastic events associated with pain, however, produce unique avenues to treat patients often too sensitive for physical movement. The brain’s perception of threat can be altered with cognitions (therapeutic neuroscience education), but also via other senses, directly aiming at the faulty mapping of the brain in pain. Treatments discussed, demonstrated, and practiced will include graded motor imagery, sensory discrimination, mirror therapy, graphesthesia, and neuroscience education. Various examination and treatment techniques will be shown and practiced during lab sessions that will allow for immediate take-home application of treatments. This class is a must for therapists working in a variety of clinical settings dealing with patients “too hot to handle”

Course Outcomes