{"id":6283,"date":"2014-10-27T06:11:24","date_gmt":"2014-10-27T10:11:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.howtocopewithpain.org\/blog\/?p=6283"},"modified":"2025-09-04T14:20:46","modified_gmt":"2025-09-04T18:20:46","slug":"new-brain-re-training-treatments-for-pain","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.howtocopewithpain.org\/blog\/6283\/new-brain-re-training-treatments-for-pain\/","title":{"rendered":"New Brain Re-Training Treatments for Pain"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: center;\">This\u00a0article is in our series <em>Why You Should See a Pain Management Psychiatrist<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">What are the\u00a0newer treatments such as <strong>mirror therapy<\/strong> and <strong>graded motor imagery<\/strong> for pain. In chronic pain, your brain is changed so that signals stuck in pain-mode. Chronic pain creates actual changes in your brain. As well, when you&#8217;re in pain, you often use your body part less, so there are less signals of normal movement registering in your brain. This can create a downward cycle:<\/p>\n<p>Pain,<br \/>\nless use of your body,<br \/>\nfewer normal movement signals competing with pain signals,<br \/>\nmore pain,<br \/>\nless use of your body, etc.<\/p>\n<p><strong>How can you break this cycle?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>There are\u00a0newer treatments\u00a0based on the concept that re-training your brain can decrease pain. These\u00a0treatments are\u00a0exciting,\u00a0and some patients using them have had good\u00a0success\u00a0decreasing their\u00a0pain.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Mirror therapy<\/strong> uses your visual system to &#8220;see&#8221; normal movement and reassure your brain that it no longer needs to produce pain signals. <strong>Graded motor imagery<\/strong> is a step-wise program aimed at breaking up movement into components, allowing your brain to slowly resume normal movement without producing pain.<\/p>\n<p>Mirror therapy has been shown to be helpful in:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>early CRPS<\/li>\n<li>phantom pain<\/li>\n<li>stroke<\/li>\n<li>low back pain<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>Graded motor imagery<\/strong> has been shown to be helpful in:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>chronic CRPS<\/li>\n<li>phantom limb pain<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Ongoing research is helping us learn more about these exciting treatments and fine-tune our use of them.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This\u00a0article is in our series Why You Should See a Pain Management Psychiatrist. What are the\u00a0newer treatments such as mirror therapy and graded motor imagery for pain. In chronic pain, your brain is changed so that signals stuck in pain-mode. Chronic pain creates actual changes in your brain. As well, when you&#8217;re in pain, you [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6283","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-1"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.howtocopewithpain.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6283","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.howtocopewithpain.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.howtocopewithpain.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.howtocopewithpain.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.howtocopewithpain.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6283"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.howtocopewithpain.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6283\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8047,"href":"https:\/\/www.howtocopewithpain.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6283\/revisions\/8047"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.howtocopewithpain.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6283"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.howtocopewithpain.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6283"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.howtocopewithpain.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6283"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}