Introduction: Cervical proprioception is the sense of position of the head or neck in space, describing the complex interaction between afferent and efferent receptors to monitor the position and movement. In the cervical spine, this sense has its neurological basis in muscle spindles and, to a lesser extent, in tendon organs (Golgi receptors), cutaneous receptors, and joint receptors. With different locomotor system disorders, the amount of afferent information coming from the defective area is reduced. This results in impaired function of all the activities in which the defective segment is involved. During movement in a healty joint, the elongation and contraction of the nearby structures occures. Those changes affect mechanoreceptors that respond to stimuli properly. Different disorders directly affect somatosensory receptors, whose main task is to transmit sensory information to the central nervous system. Dysfunction of the somatosensory receptors is the cause for joint position error. Puropose: The purpose of this diploma work was to present research findings on the effect of neck pain on cervical joint position sense in people with non-specific neck pain. Methods: The method, used in this paper, was a literature review. Research papers included in the review, were selected according to a set of criteria. Results: Eight research papers were included in the literature review. Various procedures were applied to assess the cervical joint position sense. The head to neutral reposition test was common to all the selected research papers. The results of five studies showed that the test results of subjects with neck pain were worse than subjects in the comparison group. Discussion and conclusion: Results of the included studies are very heterogeneous and indicate the need for further research in this field. The results of assessing cervical joint position sense can be affected by various factors. No differences between subjects with neck pain and healthy subjects were detected by authors in three out of eight research papers.
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