I have recently renewed my enthusiasm for digging into chiropractic basic sciences research, especially in the area of neurological efficiency, as my husband discovered the index to chiropractic literature as part of his fellowship in integrative medicine through the Weil Institute in Arizona.

There have been a series of research conducted using very sophisticated tools to measure the efficiency of intracranial signaling speed in patients receiving spinal manipulation. I am extremely grateful for a pioneer Canadian researcher who spent quite a bit of her research career in New Zealand and inspired a whole generation of younger researchers to expand on her earlier work using transcranial magnetic stimulation. To boil it down, the technology has allowed the use of an external magnetic device applied to the skull to modulate speed of transmission between incoming sensory output and outgoing muscular signaling. The technology also allows the researcher to very accurately measure the speed of transmission and the brain. As a general rule, faster transmission results in much more efficient human motor activities such as decreased response time (think athletic performance but also daily activities such as slamming on the brakes to avoid an oncoming vehicle), and overall improved speed and dexterity. This particular study was quite interesting in that it looked at how neck pain affected the speed at which an affected patient could type a series of letters (patients with neck pain were much lower than their counterparts without neck pain), and how a chiropractic adjustment not only restored typing speed to normal in patients with neck pain, but those adjusted individual actually outperformed the control group who had no neck pain and no adjustment.

We often talk about chiropractic for pain alone, but it's important to realize that pain is only a small fraction of our overall neurological functioning. Our earlier chiropractor pioneers were much more interested in the overall neurological function of their patients than pain alone. The study would certainly have reinforced their pursuits, reminding us that chiropractic can be a powerful tool to help humans perform their best, including much more efficient speed dexterity and coordination of the upper extremities for important modern human tasks such as typing.

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/323463302_Subclinical_recurrent_neck_pain_and_its_treatment_impacts_motor_training-induced_plasticity_of_the_cerebellum_and_motor_cortex