Skip to content
Chronic Pain Canada

Two Point Discrimination

Active, not recruitingEarly phase 1NCT03686748
View the official record on ClinicalTrials.gov

Recruiting status changes often. Contact the study team listed on ClinicalTrials.gov, and talk to your doctor before joining a study.

This study has no listed site in Canada in this snapshot. It is included as part of the worldwide chronic pain corpus.

Brief summary (from the registry)

SPECIFIC AIMS Pain in both youth and adults is a complex, subjective and personal experience, and remains poorly understood. One particularly perplexing dimension of some forms of pain is the tendency of pain to spread outside of an affected body site to adjacent location, and then to unaffected body sites. Such widespread pain may reflect an altered spatial tuning of somatosensory processing, such that lateral inhibition is diminished, thereby allowing pain to spread. To date, no therapies exist which are designed specifically to diminish or even reverse the spatial spread of pain. However, training in two-point discrimination holds the potential to retune spatial aspects of somatosensory processing and may represent a novel therapy for widespread pain. Thus, the present investigation will test the following aims: Aim 1. Do youth with chronic pain have disrupted spatial tuning of somatosensory processing? Deficits in two point tactile discrimination have long been noted in adults with chronic pain, but such deficits remain poorly documented in pediatric chronic pain patients. In order to determine if such deficits exist, youth with both chronic pain and healthy youth will undergo assessment of two point discrimination thresholds. Aim 2. Does two-point discrimination training result in diminished pain and disability in youth with somatic pain? After initial characterization of tactile discrimination thresholds, youth with chronic pain will participate in multiple sessions of either two-point discrimination training or a single-point spatially-directed attentional control condition. Training will involve up to 9 additional sessions. Efficacy of training will be assessed by 1) reductions in the spatial extent of pain, 2) reductions in pain intensity and unpleasantness, and 3) reductions in pain-related disability.

Study details

Official title
Retuning the Nervous System in Youth With Chronic Pain
Conditions
Interventions
  • Behavioral: Two-point discrimination training
  • Behavioral: One-point discrimination training
Sponsor
Children's Hospital Medical Center, Cincinnati
Start date
2018-07-21
Primary completion
2026-07-17
Sex
All
Age range
from 10 Years to 17 Years
Healthy volunteers
true
Results posted
No results posted in this snapshot
Countries
United States
Total sites listed
1

Eligibility criteria

Show eligibility criteria (verbatim from the registry)
Inclusion Criteria: Chronic Pain Patients: * Somatically located chronic pain * amplified musculoskeletal pain syndrome * complex regional pain syndrome * low back pain * fibromyalgia * other forms of chronic, widespread pain * Male or female, 10-17 years * High fluency in written and oral English language Control Participants: * Youth in good general health * Male or female, 10-17 years * High fluency in written and oral English language Exclusion Criteria: * Present significant mental health disorder as defined by DSM V (e.g. psychosis, bipolar disorder, major depression), * alcohol or drug dependence * documented developmental delays or impairments (e.g., autism, cerebral palsy, or mental retardation) of a magnitude that would interfere with adherence to study requirements or safe participation in the study * Primary complaint of migraine or visceral (abdominal) pain, with minimal somatic involvement.

Source: ClinicalTrials.gov (US National Library of Medicine), snapshot October 2026. Check the registry for current recruiting status. Record: https://clinicaltrials.gov/study/NCT03686748