Natural Healing: The brain, chronic pain and the body's sensory motor skill

Today we are going to be looking at a concept called sensory motor control.

It’s a mouth full I know, but it is a key concept in understanding pain and injury. If you have ever had an injury that seemed to come out of nowhere, this is very important. Let’s say one day you wake up with low back pain, no mechanism, no injury, nothing happened to explain where the pain is coming from. Let’s say this pain won’t go away, so you go get an exam, maybe an X-ray, and still nothing really to explain why there is pain.

The answer to the question, where did this come from, probably rests in the concept of sensory motor control. In 2010 a great article was published that reviewed changes in the brain in people with chronic pain. This article highlighted that as much as 10 percent of brain mass is observed in people with chronic low back pain. Here’s why the brain is so effected.

In order for joints to be healthy, a very sensitive feedback was designed to enable the brain to know where each joint is in space. This neurologic feedback system adapts to use, so new movement patterns can be easily learned. Consider riding a bike or driving a car. Initially, peddling a bike and maintain your balance was very hard. It was hard because the brain had not developed the sensitivity to input necessary to know where your balance was on the bike.

The brain initially couldn’t handle the changes in balance that peddling, and hills and turns demand. However, this amazing, adaptive system learns, and given time, develops the ability to handle and interpret this input, effectively allowing the brain to know where you are in space, even while peddling a bike around a curve. The downside of an adaptive system is that it is constantly re-righting itself based on use. This is where chronic pain and alignment come in.

The sensory motor control is dependent on correct and sufficient input making its way to the brain. Without a sufficient quantity and quality of input to the brain, the sensory motor system becomes less efficient. In essence, the mental picture your brain has of where you are in space becomes blurry. This allows errors in joint position to occur. Just like learning to ride a bike, initially you over and under compensated, and get your balance as a result. So when there is atrophy in the sensory motor system, the joints can become painful because you are moving them too much or too little.

To some degree, all management of joint problems take into account the need to improve and increase sensory input in to the brain for the purpose of improving the sensory motor control system.

If you think about it, exercise, massage, adjustments, acupuncture, even biofeedback increases input from a joint to the brain.

It is very possible that it is this increased input that basically exercises the nerves, improving the brain’s ability to coordinate movement, and ultimately resulting in decreased pain.

Dr. Joseph Fraley D.C. is the owner of Alpha Omega Chiropractic, 106 Alpine Village Road. Contact Fraley at 575-258-5999.