The neurophysiological response to manual therapy and its analgesic implications: A narrative review
- Published
- Accepted
- Subject Areas
- Anatomy and Physiology, Anesthesiology and Pain Management, Neuroscience
- Keywords
- pain, analgesia, manual therapy, descending modulation, spinal manipulation, massage, acupressure, endopharmacology, chiropractic, osteopathy
- Copyright
- © 2015 Vigotsky et al.
- Licence
- This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, reproduction and adaptation in any medium and for any purpose provided that it is properly attributed. For attribution, the original author(s), title, publication source (PeerJ PrePrints) and either DOI or URL of the article must be cited.
- Cite this article
- 2015. The neurophysiological response to manual therapy and its analgesic implications: A narrative review. PeerJ PrePrints 3:e996v2 https://doi.org/10.7287/peerj.preprints.996v2
Abstract
Manual therapy has long been a component of physical rehabilitation programs, especially to treat those in pain. The mechanisms of manual therapy, however, are not fully understood, and it has been suggested that its pain modulatory effects are of neurophysiological origin, and may be mediated by the descending modulatory circuit. Therefore, the purpose of this review is to examine the neurophysiological response of different types of manual therapy, in order to better understand the neurophysiological mechanisms behind each therapy’s analgesic effects. It is concluded that different forms of manual therapy elicit analgesic effects via different mechanisms. Additionally, future avenues of mechanistic research pertaining to manual therapy are discussed.
Author Comment
This version includes the correction of typos/formatting errors and the addition of a meta-analysis to the massage section, which notes methodological flaws in previous research and reviews.