This comes from the Journal of Manual Therapy. The role of motor learning and neuroplasticity in designing rehabilitation approaches for musculoskeletal pain disorders Manual Therapy 15 (2010) 410e414 This completely supports the theoretical basis for NeuroKinetic Therapy™. The ability to target a specific component of movement requires greater skill and increased levels of attention and precision than contraction of all muscles (e.g., strength training). Motor-skill training coupled with strength training does not promote greater cortical neuroplastic changes in the MI than motor-skill training alone (Remple et al., 2001) (Fig. 2). These findings support obser- vations from patients with LBP who show a reorganization of the M1 following isolated training of the transversus abdominis muscle and not following a common exercise walking task (Tsao et al., 2010). Moreover in patients with neck pain, improvements in the amplitude and speed of activation of the deep cervical flexor muscles occur with isolated training of these muscles and not strengthening exercises (Jull et al., 2009). Such findings suggest that skilled or precision tasks should be used in order to facilitate the cortical neuroplastic changes that are known to occur in asso- ciation with the learning stages of untrained functional tasks which will ultimately lead to improvements in motor behavior or performance.
Posted on: Tue, 29 Apr 2014 13:58:13 +0000