The effects of graded motor imagery and its components on chronic pain: A systematic review and meta-analysis

This is the post-print version of the final paper published in The Journal of Pain. The published article is available from the link below. Changes resulting from the publishing process, such as peer review, editing, corrections, structural formatting, and other quality control mechanisms may not be reflected in this document. Changes may have been made to this work since it was submitted for publication. Copyright @ 2013 The American Pain Society.Graded motor imagery (GMI) is becoming increasingly used in the treatment of chronic pain conditions. The objective of this systematic review was to synthesize all evidence concerning the effects of GMI and its constituent components on chronic pain. Systematic searches were conducted in 10 electronic databases. All randomized controlled trials (RCTs) of GMI, left/right judgment training, motor imagery, and mirror therapy used as a treatment for chronic pain were included. Methodological quality was assessed using the Cochrane risk of bias tool. Six RCTs met our inclusion criteria, and the methodological quality was generally low. No effect was seen for left/right judgment training, and conflicting results were found for motor imagery used as stand-alone techniques, but positive effects were observed for both mirror therapy and GMI. A meta-analysis of GMI versus usual physiotherapy care favored GMI in reducing pain (2 studies, n = 63; effect size, 1.06 [95% confidence interval, .41, 1.71]; heterogeneity, I2 = 15%). Our results suggest that GMI and mirror therapy alone may be effective, although this conclusion is based on limited evidence. Further rigorous studies are needed to investigate the effects of GMI and its components on a wider chronic pain population.NHMR

Inducing targeted brain states utilizing merged reality systems

As virtual reality becomes more accessible and the technology becomes greatly improved to immerse the individual in real time, there will be an impact upon the human brain and its direct functioning over states of mind. For as long as humans have noted that the brain responds to lights and sounds to aid or alter moods and mind states, technology has been used in one way or another to induce some desirable mood. This paper investigates how virtual technology could be used to forward this idea

Deep immersion with Kasina: an exploration of meditation and concentration within virtual reality environments

The matching of established meditation techniques and new technologies offer intriguing possibilities for exploring how particular states of mind can be enhanced and become an inducible target. The Kasina method of developing meditation skills can be utilized for exploring and enhancing such states within VR. A comparison of various techniques is involved, together with virtual immersion, entrainment and biofeedback through EEG, also known here as Deep Immersion

The space between worlds: Liminality, multidimensional Virtual Reality and Deep Immersion

Normal, everyday consciousness is a mixture of mental states which change, dependent upon both internal and external factors, ordinarily without any particular focused direction. When deliberate change is desired, however, there are mechanisms of transition available. These gateways allow smooth induction between stable, sustained, brain states. Building upon the concept of Deep Immersion, multidimensional virtual reality is explored utilizing personal narrative, portals and symbolic anchoring links as mechanisms of transit. Together, these target specific states within the individual, using biofeedback and fluid, self-adapting environments. This work is informed by Buddhist, yogic and other spiritual traditions, employing the latest technologies in Virtual and Augmented Reality, combined with mobile sensors and EEG equipment

Creating an ambient intelligence network using insight and merged reality technologies

Humans live and work in environments which are essentially “dumb”, though recently, due to information networks, devices within these areas have increasingly become connected. The system presented here builds on previous work to create an ambient intelligence zone using facets of a merged reality system and a new process based on recognition/insight patterns. When combined, agents within the system communicate and react as one to form a responsive ambient intelligence at a given locatio

Immersive brain entrainment in virtual worlds: actualizing meditative states

Virtual Reality with associated hardware and software advances is becoming a viable tool in neuroscience and similar fields. Technology has been harnessed to modify a user’s state of mind for some time through different approaches. Combining this background with merged reality systems, it is possible to develop intelligent tools which can manipulate brain states and enhance training mechanisms

Motor deficits are produced by removing some cortical transplants grafted into injured sensorimotor cortex of neonatal rats.

Fetal frontal cortex was transplanted into cavities formed in the right motor cortex of neonatal rats. As adults, the animals were trained to press two levers in rapid succession with their left forelimb to receive food rewards. Once they had reached an optimal level of performance, the effect of removing their transplants was assessed. Surgical removal of transplants significantly impaired the performance of 2 of 4 subjects. Placing a cross-strain skin graft to induce the immunological rejection of the transplants produced a behavioral deficit in 1 of 2 subjects with complete transplant removal. Skin grafts produced no behavioral effects in four subjects that had surviving transplants. Since the motor deficits produced by transplant removal resembled those observed following the removal of normal motor cortex, we propose that these three transplants functioned within the host brain. Histology showed that the procedures used to remove cortical grafts did not injure any host brains. Therefore, host brain damage is unlikely to account for the behavioral deterioration that followed transplant removals

Nonlinear Evolution of Instabilities Between Dust and Sound Waves

We study the non-linear evolution of the acoustic 'Resonant Drag Instability' (RDI) using numerical simulations. The acoustic RDI is excited in a dust-gas mixture when dust grains stream through gas, interacting with sound waves to cause a linear instability. We study this process in a periodic box by accelerating neutral dust with an external driving force. The instability grows as predicted by linear theory, eventually breaking into turbulence and saturating. As in linear theory, the non-linear behavior is characterized by three regimes - high, intermediate, and low wavenumbers - the boundary between which is determined by the dust-gas coupling strength and the dust-to-gas mass ratio. The high and intermediate wavenumber regimes behave similarly to one another, with large dust-to-gas ratio fluctuations while the gas remains largely incompressible. The saturated state is highly anisotropic: dust is concentrated in filaments, jets, or plumes along the direction of acceleration, with turbulent vortex-like structures rapidly forming and dissipating in the perpendicular directions. The low-wavenumber regime exhibits large fluctuations in gas and dust density, but the dust and gas remain more strongly coupled in coherent 'fronts' perpendicular to the acceleration. These behaviors are qualitatively different from those of dust 'passively' driven by external hydrodynamic turbulence, with no back-reaction force from dust onto gas. The virulent nature of these instabilities has interesting implications for dust-driven winds in a variety of astrophysical systems, including around cool-stars, in dusty torii around active-galactic-nuclei, and in and around giant molecular clouds.Comment: 11 pages, 9 figure

Geometry of Control-Affine Systems

Motivated by control-affine systems in optimal control theory, we introduce the notion of a point-affine distribution on a manifold X - i.e., an affine distribution F together with a distinguished vector field contained in F. We compute local invariants for point-affine distributions of constant type when dim(X)=n, rank(F)=n-1, and when dim(X)=3, rank(F)=1. Unlike linear distributions, which are characterized by integer-valued invariants - namely, the rank and growth vector - when dim(X)<=4, we find local invariants depending on arbitrary functions even for rank 1 point-affine distributions on manifolds of dimension 2