Embodied Virtual Reality for Chronic Pain

Disturbances in body perception (i.e., alterations in the way the body is perceived) are increasingly acknowledged as a pertinent feature of chronic pain, and include aberrations in perceived shape, size, or color that differ from objective assessment. The degree of body perception distortion positively correlates with pain, and prior interventions have evinced that treatments aimed at reducing body perception distortions correspondingly ameliorate pain. Several recent experimental research studies have demonstrated the analgesic efficacy of body illusions in a range of pain conditions.

Immersive VR multisensory feedback training signifies a promising new avenue for the potential treatment of chronic pain by supporting the design of targeted virtual environments to alter (distorted) body perceptions. Various illusions have been described to alter pain perception; however, they. Have not been directly compared to each other. The multimodal stimulus control of VR enables physical-to-virtual body transfer illusions, resulting in the feeling that the virtual body is one's own. These virtual body illusions can modulate body perception with ease and could therefore be used to alter the perceived properties of pain, consequently utilizing a virtual avatar to specifically shape interactive processing between central and peripheral mechanisms.