CORK 2026 Agenda

General considerations on selecting research constructs and approaches that are valid, informed by prior knowledge, and innovative — plus an overview of some primary neuroscience research tools.

Concrete resources and steps for entering the research field.

Open discussion to generate and workshop research ideas as a group.

Participants will learn about different tools and designs to use in research studies.

Research tools will include tools used for live and remote data collection; Quantitative Sensory Testing; and Heart Rate Variability.

NeurOMed is an educational program designed to integrate contemporary neuroscience into osteopathic clinical reasoning and practice. This four-hour introductory course provides participants with an accessible but scientifically grounded overview of how the nervous system constructs bodily experience and how touch, sensory integration, interoception, attention, context, and therapeutic interaction may contribute to the clinical encounter.

Rather than presenting neuroscience as an additional theoretical discipline, the course explores how neuroscientific concepts can be translated into clinically meaningful frameworks for osteopathic care. Particular attention will be given to the neurobiology of touch, the construction and integration of sensory information, interoceptive processing, and the dynamic interaction between patient and practitioner.

The course will combine interactive theoretical teaching with hands-on experiential sessions. Participants will have the opportunity to explore, through practical exercises and manual interaction, how changes in touch, attention, sensory context, expectation, and practitioner–patient interaction may influence perception and bodily experience. The practical component is intended not to teach a new set of techniques, but to encourage participants to critically reconsider how existing osteopathic approaches are perceived, contextualized, and adapted within a neuroscience-informed framework.

The session will also introduce key concepts that are developed throughout the complete NeurOMed program, including predictive and generative models of perception, enactive approaches to clinical interaction, therapeutic alliance, co-regulation, and patient–practitioner synchrony.

Ultimately, the course invites participants to address a fundamental question: “Do we really know what happens — to the patient and to ourselves — during an osteopathic treatment?”

By combining neuroscience, clinical reasoning, experiential learning, and touch, this introductory course provides a foundation for developing a more informed, reflective, and patient-centered approach to osteopathic care.

By the end of this four-hour introductory course, participants will be able to:

• Describe key neuroscientific principles relevant to osteopathic practice, including the construction of sensation, multisensory integration, interoception, and the neurophysiology of touch.
• Explain how bodily perception is actively constructed by the nervous system, rather than representing a simple passive response to peripheral sensory input.
• Recognise how touch, attention, expectation, context, and previous experience can influence perception and the clinical response to manual interaction.
• Apply selected neuroscience-informed concepts during hands-on osteopathic interaction, exploring how variations in touch and sensory context may modify the patient’s perceptual experience.
• Reflect critically on the patient–practitioner interaction as a dynamic and reciprocal process, incorporating concepts such as therapeutic alliance, co-regulation, and interpersonal synchrony.
• Begin integrating neuroscience-informed reasoning into existing osteopathic assessment and treatment approaches, without reducing clinical care to either purely biomechanical or purely neurophysiological explanations.
• Identify the conceptual foundations of the wider NeurOMed programme, including predictive/generative models, enactivism, psychologically informed osteopathic care, and the development of an osteopathically informed clinical approach.