• René Pelletier, Johanne Higgins, and Daniel Bourbonnais.
• Sciences de la réadaptation, École de réadaptation, Faculté de Médecine, Université de Montréal, Montréal, Québec, H3C 3J7, Canada. Electronic address: daniel.bourbonnais@umontreal.ca.
• Musculoskelet Sci Pract. 2018 Jun 1; 35: 18-24.

ObjectiveMusculoskeletal disorders are associated with altered sensory, proprioceptive and cognitive processes. Sensory processes affect the internal cortical representation of the body in space, the body schema, which in turn influences motor control. The purpose of this study was to determine if participants with wrist/hand disorders had impaired performance on a task associated with the body schema, the Left/Right Judgement Task (LRJT) and secondly how LRJT performance, motor performance, disability, pain and related aspects are associated.MethodsFifteen healthy control participants and 15 participants with hand/wrist pain were asked to determine the laterality of images of hands. Measures of motor performance (Purdue Pegboard test), self-reported disability (Australian Canadian Hand Index), and pain related aspects (pain intensity, symptom duration, pain interference and affective distress) were recorded.ResultsParticipants with wrist/hand pain scored lower on all segments of the Purdue Pegboard test. There were differences in LRJT performance between groups for both Accuracy (p = 0.03) and Reaction Time (RT) (p < 0.01). There was no correlation between RT and Accuracy with pain intensity, pain duration, and disability. Both motor performance (r = 0.58-0.64) and LRJT performance Accuracy (r = 0.59) and RT (r = -0.56) were correlated with affective distress. A significant correlation was observed between RT and motor performance in healthy control participants (r = -0.56, p = 0.03) but not in participants with wrist/hand pain (r = -0.26, p = 0.44).ConclusionsLRJT and motor performance was correlated with affective distress in participants with wrist/hand pain suggestive of complex interactions between cognitive-affective processes and sensorimotor integration.Copyright © 2018 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

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