I have had the privilege of spending the last month working
in Lorimer Moseley’s Body In Mind lab in Adelaide. After recovering from the 34
hour flight, the jet lag and FINALLY being able to make a decent cup of tea, I
thought I would take the opportunity to share some of my experiences with you
(and believe me, there were many!). Aside from the obvious highlights of
hugging a koala and exploring in great depth the Adelaide Hills wine region
(twice), the experience I gained from working in the Body In Mind lab was
invaluable. While I was there, I learnt to use a laser to induce experimental
pain in healthy participants, and was involved in a study looking at factors that
can change pain thresholds. This was a new angle of research for me, as I have
previously only been involved in research into chronic pain rather than
experimentally induced pain. It was interesting to gain some insight into how
the study of experimental pain might add to research into chronic pain to tell
us more about the experience of pain as a whole.
Helen in the illusions room NOI conference, 2012
I also gained
experience using a thermal imaging camera which will be a very useful addition
to some of our future research using MIRAGE. Disruptions in skin temperature
regulation often accompany the disruptions in body ownership seen in various
neurological and psychological conditions such as asomatognosia (loss of
awareness of a limb), schizophrenia, and Chronic Regional Pain Syndrome Type 1.
Research has also shown that experimentally induced disownership of a limb is
closely linked to limb-specific temperature regulation (Moseley et al. 2008).
It would therefore be useful to see how temperature is affected when the normal
representation of the body is disrupted in healthy participants using some of
our multisensory illusions. In particular, I have been piloting to see what
effect the disappearing hand trick has on skin temperature in the ‘disappeared’
hand.
Dr. Tasha
Stanton and others setting up the Illusions room
My trip to Australia conveniently coincided with the NOI Neurodynamics
and the Neuromatrix conference 2012. This was an amazing event, and it was
great to see so many clinicians and scientists coming together to try to better
understand and treat chronic pain. Throughout my trip I worked with Dr. Tasha
Stanton to train up three physiotherapy students to use MIRAGE so they could
demonstrate it in the ‘Illusions Room’ at the conference. It went down better
than we ever could have hoped, with 45 minute queues to have a go on MIRAGE!
There were also a number of people with osteoarthritis who said that the
stretching illusion alleviated their pain – one of whom was completely unaware
of our ongoing research into the pain relieving benefits of MIRAGE. All in all,
the Illusions room was a fantastic success, so thanks very much to Andrew
Zacharia, Adrian Primerano, and Kris Krotiris, the physio students responsible
for making the whole event brilliant. Along with the rest of the Body In Mind
team, I also took part in the Ride for Pain - a community bike ride organised
by Lorimer Moseley to help raise awareness about chronic pain. It was a great day,
with over 550 riders showing their support. I’m ashamed to admit I opted for
the 35km beach ride, while most of the rest of the team completed the gruelling
100km ride through the Adelaide Hills. They all did so well, and if I manage to
make it out for next year’s ride I will most definitely be going all the way!
Riders from the "Ride for Pain" community cycle ride.
The trip was such an exciting opportunity and it was great
to work with such brilliant and passionate researchers. It has given me so many
ideas of where to take my future research, and is hopefully just the start of
some exciting future collaborations.
Written by Helen Gilpin
