Vibro-tactile stimulation of the neck reduces pain in people with cervical dystonia: a proof-of-concept study
Bibliographic record
Abstract
BACKGROUND: Pain is a common non-motor symptom in patients with cervical dystonia (CD), severely impacting their quality of life. The pathophysiology of CD is incompletely understood but it involves altered processing of proprioceptive and pain signals. OBJECTIVES: The purpose of this proof-of-concept study was to determine if vibro-tactile stimulation (VTS)-a non-invasive form of neuromodulation targeting the somatosensory system-can modulate neck pain in people with CD. METHODS: In a multi-center study, 44 CD patients received VTS to sternocleidomastoid and/or trapezius muscles for up to 45 min under 9 different stimulation conditions that either targeted a single or a pair of muscles. The primary outcome measure was a perceived pain score (PPS) rated by participants on a 100-point analogue scale. RESULTS: During VTS, 29/44 (66%) of participants experienced a reduction in PPS of at least 10% with 17/44 (39%) reporting a reduction in pain of 50% or higher. After VTS cessation, 57% of participants still reported a 10% or higher reduction in PPS. Effects were significant at the group level and persisted for up to 20 min post-treatment. No distinct optimal stimulation profiles were identified for specific CD phenotypes. Clinical markers of disease severity or duration did not predict the degree of VTS-induced pain reduction. CONCLUSION: This proof-of-concept study demonstrates the potential of VTS as a new non-invasive therapeutic option for treating neck pain associated with CD. Further research needs to delineate optimal dosage and long-term effects.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".