Assessment of motor skill accuracy and coordination variability after application of local and remote experimental pain

ABSTRACT

Motor learning is a relatively permanent change in motor performance. Also, one of the factors that can affect movement acquisition and movement patterns is pain and injury. The present study aims to investigate the effect of the induced local and remote pain during dart-throwing skill acquisition by examining motor skill accuracy and coordination variability. Three groups of 30 participants with a mean age of 18–25 were randomly assigned to local and remote pain or control groups. Capsaicin gel was applied to the pain groups for measuring the severity of pain using the Visual Analogue Scale (VAS). The results revealed that pain had no impact on dart-throwing skill acquisition, and there was no significant difference (p = 0.732) among the three groups at three stages of retention test. The results also showed that there was a significant difference among the three groups in terms of variability in shoulder-elbow (p = 0.025) and elbow-wrist joints (p = 0.000) in the deceleration and dart-throwing phases. The Central Nervous System seems to make adjustments when the task is associated with pain during the acquisition phase. Also, the groups with or without pain have notably various strategies, so differently, to perceive motor skills.

KEYWORDS:

• Pain
• motor learning
• coordination variability
• skill accuracy
• exercise
• dart-throwing skill

Research highlights

• Induction of local and remote experimental pain had no effect on the acquisition of motor skills.

• Pain increased the coordination variability in the deceleration and dart-throwing phases.

• Induction of local and remote pain had no effect on coordination variability in the acceleration phase.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.