From: Patrick Wilken (patrickw@cs.monash.edu.au)
Date: Fri Aug 13 1999 - 19:06:00 MDT
>Due to carpal tunnel syndrome, I have to rest my hands for a week or
>two. I probably won't even be checking my email, since the doc says
>complete rest is very important.
Eliezer:
I am not sure if this is of any particular direct relevance to you, but I
thought you might be interested.
best, patrick
========================================================================
SCIENTISTS TRACK ELUSIVE RSI TO THE BRAIN
Thu, 08 Apr 1999 15:21:07 GMT Lem Bingley
http://www.zdnet.co.uk/news/1999/13/ns-7673.html
Research published in this week's (10 April) edition of New Scientist
has shed light on the cause of the most elusive type of repetitive
strain injury (RSI). The early findings have already led to alternative
treatments radically different from established practice, that could
potentially help tens of thousands of sufferers to make a recovery. The
new evidence could also lead to better ways of preventing the affliction
in the future.
RSI covers a whole category of injuries that result not from a single
incident but from sustaining a particular activity over a long period of
time. In some forms -- such as carpal tunnel syndrome which causes
chronic pain and irritation in the wrist -- problems are due to physical
damage that can be observed and treated with surgery, but other forms
have proven more puzzling. Keyboard users complaining of unfocussed pain
or a general lack of dexterity in their hands or forearms have baffled
doctors by displaying no signs of physical damage. These forms of RSI
are labelled overuse syndrome and patients are advised simply to rest in
the hope that their symptoms will disappear.
Researchers in the US and Germany have discovered that rest may be
useless for these particular sufferers. Experiments have shown that long
periods spent making rapid, repetitive hand movements can lead to
harmful changes within the brain, rather than in the hand. Change in
itself is normal, because the parts of the brain used to monitor
sensation and control movement are continually being honed by
experience. However, the researchers postulate that some rapid hand
movements are effectively 'fooling' the brain into making the wrong kind
of adjustments to its map of the body.
It seems that the small, rapid movements used in typing and operating a
mouse can be mistakenly processed by the brain as though different
muscles were operating simultaneously, rather than in rapid succession.
If the brain makes this mistake, its mental map of the hand can become
inaccurate. Eventually the brain will lose its ability to distinguish
between, say, muscles on the back and the front of the fingers. Once the
degradation is in place, it becomes impossible or painful to use the
fingers properly as the brain mistakenly tells muscles to pull in
opposite directions at once.
Rest cannot correct the problem, because inactivity does nothing to mend
the mental map. By contrast, researchers realised that slow exercises
designed to force the brain to make fine distinctions might be
restorative. So while resting is pointless learning Braille, for
example, might do the trick.
The researchers have observed the brain changes in primates made to work
switches for their food, and in musicians suffering from a repetitive
stress condition known as focal dystonia. New Scientist reports that the
brain-maps of the musicians were shown to improve after re-training.
No-one has yet studied the brains of computer users suffering from
overuse syndrome, but a small group of such patients who underwent the
new treatment were all able to return to work within three months.
One unanswered question is why the majority of keyboard users don't
develop this kind of RSI. According to the published report, it may only
be those people with a generally poor ability to spread their fingers
that are at risk.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Patrick Wilken
Editor: PSYCHE: An International Journal of Research on Consciousness
Board Member: The Association for the Scientific Study of Consciousness
http://psyche.cs.monash.edu.au/ http://www.phil.vt.edu/ASSC/
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Fri Nov 01 2002 - 15:04:45 MST