This course focuses on treating people with a hypersensitive nervous system who are 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 actually 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.

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.

Course Objectives/Outcomes

By the end of the course, a successful participant will be able to: 

• Describe the structural and functional changes in the brain as they pertain to pain  
• Recognize various clinical tests that can be used to screen for altered neuroplasticity  
• Immediately apply brief remapping techniques in a variety of patient cases  
• Recognize how brief remapping techniques can alter patient sensitivity and positively influence pain in real-life clinical practice  
• Immediately apply the information from the educational session to clinical practice 

Applicability

• Therapeutic Pain Specialist (TPS)
• Fellowship in Pain Sciences

Evidence in Motion is an AOTA Approved Provider of professional development. PD activity approval ID# 6947. This Blended Hybrid Activity is offered at 16 CEUs
[Intermediate, Blended Hybrid]. AOTA does not endorse specific course content, products, or clinical procedures.