Complex regional pain syndrome (CRPS) is a dehabilitating chronic condition occurring with peripheral lesions. There is growing consensus for a central contribution to CRPS. Although the nature of this central body representation disorder is increasingly debated, it has been repeatedly argued that CRPS results in motor neglect of the affected side. The present article describes a comprehensive and quantitative case report demonstrating that: (1) not all patients with chronic CRPS exhibit decreased spatial attention for the affected side and (2) patients may actually exhibit a substantial, broad and reliable attentional bias toward the painful side, akin to spatial neglect for the healthy side. This unexpected result agrees with the idea that patients can be hyper-attentive toward their pathological side as a manifestation of lowered pain threshold, allodynia and kinesiophobia.
Keywords: ADL; Body representation; CRPS; Motor neglect; Pain; Prism adaptation; Reference frame; Spatial neglect.
Copyright © 2016. Published by Elsevier Masson SAS.