Abstract:
Skeletomuscular disorders, a common chronic disease, involve the bones, muscles or connective tissues, often causing localized pain, soreness or movement disorders. Abnormal sensory inputs or altered motor patterns often cause adaptive changes in the central nervous system (CNS), called CNS remodeling. In turn, CNS remodeling may further cause maladaptation of the motor system and sensory deficits. Current studies have applied multimodal neuroimaging, electroencephalography, magnetoencephalography, and functional near-infrared spectroscopy to reveal that patients with skeletomuscular disorders have altered remodeling in pain/emotion-related brain regions or pathways, motor cortex, sensory cortex, balance-related brain regions, task execution networks, and default networks. Some studies have also explored the mechanism of CNS remodeling at the cellular level, suggesting that alterations in the number of synapses or synaptic connections may be responsible for the remodeling. This paper focuses on the development and regression of skeletomuscular disorders and central remodeling.