Sensory-motor training with virtual reality as a complementary intervention to manual therapy for persistent non-specific neck pain: a randomized controlled trial.

Background: Persistent non-specific neck pain (NP) is a widespread condition described as a complex biopsychosocial disorder, characterized by physical and psychological symptoms. Virtual reality (VR) shows promise in NP treatment, potentially reducing pain, kinesiophobia, and improving range of motion (ROM) and motor control.

Aim: The primary aim of the study was to assess the effectiveness of VR sensorimotor training, combined with manual therapy, in reducing the level of disability in persistent non-specific NP individuals.

Blood cell differential count discretisation modelling to predict survival in adults reporting to the emergency room: a retrospective cohort study.

Objectives: To assess the survival predictivity of baseline blood cell differential count (BCDC), discretised according to two different methods, in adults visiting an emergency room (ER) for illness or trauma over 1 year.

Design: Retrospective cohort study of hospital records.

Setting: Tertiary care public hospital in northern Italy.

The natural history of ALS: Baseline characteristics from a multicenter clinical cohort.

Background: Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) is a rare disease with urgent need for improved treatment. Despite the acceleration of research in recent years, there is a need to understand the full natural history of the disease. As only 40% of people living with ALS are eligible for typical clinical trials, clinical trial datasets may not generalize to the full ALS population.

Predictors of pain reduction following a program of manual therapies for patients with temporomandibular disorders: A prospective observational study.

Background: Clinical guidelines recommend conservative treatment for the management of temporomandibular disorders (TMD), and manual therapy (MT) is commonly applied to reduce pain and improve function.

Objectives: To identify predictors of pain reduction and functional improvement following a program of manual therapies (MTP) in patients with TMD and develop a first screening tool that could be used in clinical practice to facilitate decision-making.

Design: A cohort of 102 adults with a diagnosis of TMD were treated with four weekly sessions within a MTP applied to craniomandibular structures.

The impact of Covid-19-related distress on general health, oral behaviour, psychosocial features, disability and pain intensity in a cohort of Italian patients with temporomandibular disorders.

This study aimed to understand the impact of COVID-19 distress on psychological status, features of central sensitization and facial pain severity in people with temporomandibular disorders (TMDs). In this prospective cohort study, 45 adults (19 chronic, 26 acute/subacute TMD) were recruited prior to the COVID-19 outbreak. Baseline assessment took place before the outbreak while a follow-up was performed immediately after the lockdown period.

Predictors of pain reduction following manual therapy in patients with temporomandibular disorders: a protocol for a prospective observational study.

Introduction: Temporomandibular disorders (TMDs) are principally characterised by pain in the craniomandibular area and probable limitations of jaw opening. Manual therapy, like other recommended conservative treatments included in clinical guidelines, is commonly used to treat patients with TMD to reduce pain and improve function. However, outcomes may be variable.

Efficacy of virtual reality to reduce chronic low back pain: Proof-of-concept of a non-pharmacological approach on pain, quality of life, neuropsychological and functional outcome.

Objectives: Chronic pain, such as low-back pain, can be a highly disabling condition degrading people's quality of life (QoL). Not every patient responds to pharmacological therapies, thus alternative treatments have to be developed. The chronicity of pain can lead to a somatic dysperception, meaning a mismatch between patients' own body perception and its actual physical state.

Cognitive training with action-related verbs induces neural plasticity in the action representation system as assessed by gray matter brain morphometry.

Embodied cognition theories of semantic memory still face the need for multiple sources of converging evidence in support of the involvement of sensory-motor systems in action-related knowledge. Previous studies showed that training manual actions improves semantic processing of verbs referring to the trained actions. The present work aimed to provide complementary evidence by measuring the brain plasticity effects of a cognitive training requiring sustained lexical-semantic processing of action-related verbs.

Training of manual actions improves language understanding of semantically related action sentences.

Conceptual knowledge accessed by language may involve the reactivation of the associated primary sensory-motor processes. Whether these embodied representations are indeed constitutive to conceptual knowledge is hotly debated, particularly since direct evidence that sensory-motor expertise can improve conceptual processing is scarce. In this study, we sought for this crucial piece of evidence, by training naive healthy subjects to perform complex manual actions and by measuring, before and after training, their performance in a semantic language task.