Contralateral limb movement modulates cold pressor pain

Background

Many studies investigating the attenuation of pain by psychological means have confounded cognitive factors with motoric factors. Two experiments were performed to investigate the extent to which intentional movements alone can attenuate experimental pain.

Methods

In experiment 1, tolerance and intensity of cold pressor pain administered to the non-dominant hand was measured for two movement conditions, reciprocal eye movements and reciprocal finger movements of the dominant hand. In experiment 2, tolerance and intensity was measured for two reciprocal finger movement conditions, when visual attention was directed to the dominant hand and when visual attention was directed to the location of the noxiously stimulated non-dominant hand.

Results

Reciprocal finger movements of the limb contralateral to a noxiously stimulated limb were found to result in significantly longer tolerance times and significantly lower pain intensity ratings when visual attention was directed to and away from the spatial location of the noxious stimulation.

Conclusion

These results confirm that movement of the limb contralateral to a noxiously stimulated limb attenuates experimental pain. Further research is required to ascertain whether movement alone attenuates non-experimental pain.