Episode 60
Can VR Technology Alter Pain?

 

Can virtual reality technology affect pain perception? Well, yeah. Catherine Cowey and I discuss a fun study about this co-authored by Lorimer Moseley in 2015 in the Psychological Science Journal. The researchers used VR technology to give subjects (with a history of neck pain) the illusion that they had moved their neck more or less than they actually had. As they hypothesized, this had an effect on their perception of pain.

Highlights

  • Pain is complicated.

  • Chronic pain is complicated.

  • Pain does not work like telephone wires. It doesn't start in the body then travel to the spinal cord and then to the brain. Rather, pain is an output from the brain to the body. what?

  • Nociceptors are not pain receptors. They are stimulus and threat receptors. They do not detect pain.

  • Examples of how visual input has a significant impact on pain.

  • This study can be a valuable tool in pain education. Educating people on how pain works can help them manage their pain.

 

Read our review of this study over at Yoga Research and Beyond