This study will assess the physiological interaction between the palpating clinician and a research participant using a laser Doppler flow meter to detect changes in blood flow parameters.
Research participants will lie on their backs on a soft table while a licensed physician, with special training in osteopathic palpation and manipulation approaches, touches, and administers a slight inhibition of occipital bone motion for five minutes per stage. Both will have a non invasive skin sensor (probe), called a laser Doppler flow meter, attached to their forehead to detect changes in subcutaneous blood flow velocity. The signal from the device will be augmented and transmitted for display onto a digital polygraph recorder. Then, using Fourier transformation software, the signal will be displayed as a graph for spectral analysis to determine the effect on specific wave forms related to autonomic activity. The interaction between the two individuals will be assessed for evidence of entrainment phenomenon, i.e., the influence of one biorhythm upon another.
Study Type
INTERVENTIONAL
Allocation
RANDOMIZED
Purpose
BASIC_SCIENCE
Masking
QUADRUPLE
Enrollment
20
Western University of Health Sciences
Pomona, California, United States
Entrainment of still points between clinician and research participant
When one person has a still point it may or may not affect the other person. If it does, then entrainment will have occurred. The clinician's intent is to create a still point in the participant by inhibiting occipital motion. This is measurable using the laser Doppler flow meter. The induction of the still point, which is manifest on the polygraph and in spectroscopy as a distinct diminished amplitude at the .08-1.5 Hz frequency, may entrain the clinician to have a still point as well.
Time frame: within 1 minute of each other (arbitrary designation)
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