The Effect of Balance Training on Cervical Sensorimotor Function and Neck Pain

Abstract

ABSTRACT. The authors' aim was to evaluate the effect of balance training on cervical joint position sense in people with subclinical neck pain. Thirty-four participants were randomly assigned to balance training or to stay active. Sensorimotor function was determined before and after 5 weeks of training by assessing the ability to reproduce the neutral head position and a predefined rotated head position. After balance training, the intervention group showed improved joint repositioning accuracy and decreased pain whereas no effects were observed in the control group. A weak correlation was identified between reduced neck pain intensity and improved joint repositioning. The present data demonstrate that balance training can effectively improve cervical sensorimotor function and decrease neck pain intensity.

Neck muscle vibration can improve sensorimotor function in patients with neck pain

“…The close interaction of the cervical spine and postural control is also indicated by intervention studies showing, for instance, reduced postural sway after sensorimotor training of the cervical spine [44]. Complementarily, 5 weeks of balance training resulted in a positive effect on the sensorimotor function of the cervical spine assessed by head repositioning tasks [28]. The current data obtained in the dynamic perturbation task strengthen the close interaction of sensorimotor performance of the cervical spine and postural control: in neck pain patients, vibration decreased significantly the postural sway on an unstable support surface.…”

“…However, our findings reveal for the first time a positive effect of neck muscle vibration on impaired joint position sense acuity in patients with neck pain. For patients, different long-term treatments have previously been shown to improve repositioning accuracy: conscious head relocation tasks [26], chiropractic care [27], and balance training [28]. All these interventions took place over a period of several weeks.…”

Quantitative measures of sagittal plane head–neck control: A test–retest reliability study

“…Such methods have been shown to be reliable(Michiels et al, 2013), successful in detecting improvements following intervention(Beinert and Taube, 2013; Reid et al, 2014), and able to discriminate between individuals with neck pain and asymptomatic controls(Chen and Treleaven, 2013; Descarreaux et al, 2010; Woodhouse and Vasseljen, 2008). While specific metrics, such as task error in the time domain, provide valuable information regarding subject performance, these measurements alone do not allow for inferences into system dynamics.…”

Effects of proprioceptive exercises on pain and function in chronic neck- and low back pain rehabilitation: a systematic literature review

“…Four studies compared mPrT effects on pain to inactive control groups [59,66,69,71] (Table 4). The Taimela study (low RoB) found significant reduction of neck pain [66] immediately after a 12-week multimodal intervention period, but not at the one-year follow-up measurement.…”

“…Three major directions of PrT were identified. The interventions were described as (1) perceptive PrT (pPrT) where discriminatory perceptive exercises with somatosensory stimuli to the back and joint position sense is practiced [60,61], (2) as multimodal PrT (mPrT) postural control or balance exercises on labile surfaces often combined with other forms of exercise [59,[62][63][64][65][66][67][68][69][70][71][72][73], or as (3) head relocation PrT (rPrT) with head-eye coordination exercise [57,58,74].…”