Pain Research & Management

The research objective was to determine if the cognitive effects of neck pain could be reduce significantly with the chiropractic treatment. The research methods included the recruitemtent of 42 right handed subjects between the ages of 18 and 45 years. 28 of these subjects had neck pain, and 14 subjects were absent of neck pain and were used as healthy controls. The neck pain group was split into two groups which were the “treatment” and “control” groups. Each subject completed 3 different cognitive tests which were the intra/extra dimensional test (IED), rapid visual processing (RVP) test, and the spatial span (SSP) test using Cambridge Cognition software. Subjects were tested before and after 4 weeks. During the 4 weeks the neck pain treatment group received chriporactic treatment.

The research outcomes were a significant difference between the healthy subjects baseline and the neck pain subjects baseline (neck pain control and treatment groups) during the RVP test. There was a significant difference between the neck pain control group and the neck pain treatment group in the RVP and IED findings. For the SSP findings, there was a significant difference between the healthy subjects baseline and the neck pain subjects baseline.

The interpretation is at baseline the subclinical neck pain individuals performed worse than the healthy controls on the RVP, IED and the SSP tests of cognitive function. The working population can have reduced cognitive processing dur to low grade neck pain which can increase workplace errors, affecting the safety and productivity.