The treatment, being developed by researchers from the University of Bath and the Royal National Hospital for Rheumatic Diseases (RNHRD), is based on a new theory about how people experience pain even when doctors can find no direct cause.
This ‘cortical’ model of pain suggests that the brain’s image of the body can become faulty, resulting in a mismatch between the brain’s movement control systems and its sensory systems, causing a person to experience pain when they move a particular hand, foot or limb.
Researchers believe that this kind of problem could be behind a host of pain-related disorders, such as complex regional pain syndrome and repetitive strain injury....
“We think it is the same system that is triggered when you are running down stairs, miss the last step and then feel a jolt of surprise.
“In missing that bottom step, you jar the prediction that your brain had made about what was going to happen, triggering an alert to the body that things are not as you expected, hence the feeling of surprise.
“This is because in most cases normal awareness and experience of our limbs is often based on the predicted state rather than the actual state.
“When the two do not match we think sensations are generated to alert the body that things are not as it thought – rather like an early warning mechanism.
“If the discrepancy is very large [like in the mirror experiment described below] then pain may be experienced, as pain is the body’s ultimate warning mechanism.
“We think that this system may be responsible for a range of disorders where patients feel pain for apparently no clinical reason.
“Somehow the brain’s image of the body differs from what it senses. When the patient moves their hand, foot or limb, they experience pain as a result.
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