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Virtual reality: physiological and behavioral mechanisms to increase individual pain tolerance limits.

ABSTRACT:

Abstract

Immersive virtual reality (VR) consists of immersion in artificial environments through the use of real-time render technologies and the latest generation devices. The users feel just as immersed as they would feel in an everyday life situation, and this sense of presence seems to have therapeutic potentials. However, the VR mechanisms remain only partially known. This study is novel in that, for the first time in VR research, appropriate controls for VR contexts, immersive characteristics (ie, control VR), and multifaceted objective and subjective outcomes were included in a within-subject study design conducted on healthy participants. Participants received heat thermal stimulations to determine how VR can increase individual heat-pain tolerance limits (primary outcome) measured in degrees Celsius and seconds while recording concurrent autonomic responses. We also assessed changes in pain unpleasantness, mood, situational anxiety, and level of enjoyment (secondary outcomes). The VR induced a net gain in heat-pain tolerance limits that was paralleled by an increase of the parasympathetic responses. VR improved mood, situational anxiety, and pain unpleasantness when participants perceived the context as enjoyable, but these changes did not influence the increases in pain tolerance limits. Distraction increased pain tolerance limits but did not induce such mood and physiological changes. Immersive VR has been anecdotally applied to improve acute symptoms in contexts such as battlefield, emergency, and operating rooms. This study provides a mechanistic framework for VR as a low-risk, nonpharmacological intervention, which regulates autonomic, affective (mood and situational anxiety), and evaluative (subjective pain and enjoyment ratings) responses associated with acute pain.

SUBMITTER: Colloca L

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7584744 | biostudies-literature |

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Project description:BackgroundPain is a complex experience that involves sensory-discriminative and cognitive-emotional neuronal processes. It has long been known across cultures that pain can be relieved by mindful breathing (MB). There is a common assumption that MB exerts its analgesic effect through interoception. Interoception refers to consciously refocusing the mind's attention to the physical sensation of internal organ function.ObjectiveIn this study, we dissect the cortical analgesic processes by imaging the brains of healthy subjects exposed to traditional MB (TMB) and compare them with another group for which we augmented MB to an outside sensory experience via virtual reality breathing (VRB).MethodsThe VRB protocol involved in-house-developed virtual reality 3D lungs that synchronized with the participants' breathing cycles in real time, providing them with an immersive visual-auditory exteroception of their breathing.ResultsWe found that both breathing interventions led to a significant increase in pain thresholds after week-long practices, as measured by a thermal quantitative sensory test. However, the underlying analgesic brain mechanisms were opposite, as revealed by functional near-infrared spectroscopy data. In the TMB practice, the anterior prefrontal cortex uniquely modulated the premotor cortex. This increased its functional connection with the primary somatosensory cortex (S1), thereby facilitating the S1-based sensory-interoceptive processing of breathing but inhibiting its other role in sensory-discriminative pain processing. In contrast, virtual reality induced an immersive 3D exteroception with augmented visual-auditory cortical activations, which diminished the functional connection with the S1 and consequently weakened the pain processing function of the S1.ConclusionsIn summary, our study suggested two analgesic neuromechanisms of VRB and TMB practices-exteroception and interoception-that distinctively modulated the S1 processing of the ascending noxious inputs. This is in line with the concept of dualism (Yin and Yang).

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Virtual reality: physiological and behavioral mechanisms to increase individual pain tolerance limits.

Abstract

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