AUTHOR=Biran Iftah , Book Andrea , Aviram Liron , Bregman Noa , Bahagali Einat , Tripto Assaf 

TITLE=Body Structural Description Impairment in Complex Regional Pain Syndrome Type I

JOURNAL=Frontiers in Psychology

VOLUME=Volume 13 - 2022

YEAR=2022

URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychology/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.853641

DOI=10.3389/fpsyg.2022.853641

ISSN=1664-1078

ABSTRACT=Background: Complex Regional Pain Syndrome (CRPS) is a clinical syndrome composed of chronic pain, motor impairment and autonomic dysfunction usually affecting a limb. Although CRPS seems to be a peripheral disorder, it is accompanied by parietal alterations leading to body-schema impairments (the online representations of the body). Impairments to body structural description (the topographical bodily map) were not assessed systematically in CRPS. A patient we encountered with severe disruption to her bodily structural description led us to further study this domain.  

Aims: To document aberrant body structural description in subjects with CRPS using an object assembly task. 

Methods: Body Schema Study: 6 subjects with CRPS-I and 6 age and sex matched healthy controls completed visual puzzles taken from WAIS-III and WAIS-R. The puzzles were either human body or nonhuman body objects. Mann-Whitney U-tests were performed to compare groups performances. 

Results: The CRPS group received lower scores for human body objects (u=3,p<0.05), whereas the nonhuman object scoring didn’t reveal significant differences between groups (u=9,p>0.05). 

Conclusions: CRPS subjects suffer from impaired body structural description which can take the form of body parts disassembly and body parts discontinuity. This impairment can serve as a nidus for aberrant psychological representation of the body.