Rubber Hand Illusion Reduces Discomfort Caused by Cold Stimulus

Siedlecka, Marta; Klimza, Anna; Łukowska, Marta; Wierzchoń, Michał

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0109909

Cited by 39 publications

(27 citation statements)

References 57 publications

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“…Mohan and coworkers 40 showed no changes in pain perception during the rubber hand illusion , so that the analgesic effects of looking at one's own body would not hold true when the body part is fake, even though it is attributed to oneself. In contrast, other studies showed that during the rubber hand illusion the vision of the "owned" rubber hand leads to an increase in HTP 19 and higher resistance to painfully cold stimuli 16,54 . This held true for a virtual arm, since Martini and coworkers 36 To understand these different findings we looked into the methodological differences between these studies.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 81%

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Seeing an Embodied Virtual Hand is Analgesic Contingent on Colocation

Nierula

Martini

Matamala-Gomez

et al. 2017

The Journal of Pain

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Highlights• Seeing your embodied virtual body in virtual reality increases pain threshold.• To increase pain threshold your virtual and real body should be co-located.• For the arm, this analgesic effect diminishes when there are 30 cm between virtual and real arm. AbstractSeeing one's own body has been reported to have analgesic properties. Analgesia has also been described when seeing an embodied virtual body co-located with the real one. However, there is a controversy regarding whether this effect holds true when seeing an illusory-owned body part, such as during the rubber-hand illusion. A critical difference between these paradigms is the distance between real and surrogate body part. Co-location of real arm and surrogate is possible in an immersive virtual environment, but not during illusory ownership of a rubber arm. The present study aimed at testing whether the distance between real and virtual arm can explain such differences in terms of pain modulation. Employing a paradigm of embodiment of a virtual body allowed us to evaluate heat pain thresholds (HPT) at co-location and at 30-cm distance between real and virtual arm. We observed significantly higher HPT at co-location than at 30-cm distance.The analgesic effects of seeing a virtual co-located arm are eliminated when increasing the distance between real and virtual arm which explains why seeing an illusorily owned rubber arm does not consistently result in analgesia. These findings are relevant for the use of virtual reality in pain management. PerspectiveLooking at a virtual body has analgesic properties similar to looking at one's real body. We identify the importance of co-location between real and surrogate body for this to occur and thereby respond to a scientific controversy. This information is useful for immersive virtual reality in pain management.Analgesia, body ownership, pain, rubber hand illusion, virtual environments. M A N U S C R I P T A C C E P T E D ACCEPTED MANUSCRIPT were attached to the dorsal distal phalanges of their right index and middle fingers for the delivery of tactile stimuli. Noise isolation was ensured by administration of pink noise.Familiarization phase. Participants were first familiarized with the virtual body illusion: they donned the head-mounted display through which they saw a virtual male body located at the same place of their own body. When they looked down they saw this virtual body sitting on a P = 0.034); there was no significant interaction between synchrony of VTS and distance on MultipleHands (z = 1.19, n.s).

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 81%

“…The distance between real and fake limb has been identified as critical factor for body ownership, in the vertical 27 and in the horizontal plane 22 . On the other hand, body ownership over a fake body part seems to affect pain perception 16,19,36,54 .…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Seeing an Embodied Virtual Hand is Analgesic Contingent on Colocation

Nierula

Martini

Matamala-Gomez

et al. 2017

The Journal of Pain

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“…This is reminiscent of the so-called rubber hand illusion (RHI, Botvinick and Cohen, 1998), in which perceived ownership over an artificial limb can be induced via the congruence of vision and touch. There is evidence that the RHI may reduce pain (Heged€ us et al, 2014;Martini et al, 2014;Siedlecka et al, 2014). It remains to be shown to what extent some of the divergent results can be explained by methodological differences (Mohan et al, 2012;Nierula et al, 2017).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Visually induced analgesia during massage treatment in chronic back pain patients

Löffler

Trojan

Zieglgänsberger

et al. 2017

European Journal of Pain

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“…Similar findings were found in a study investigating the effects of the RHI on the perceived discomfort caused by cold stimuli. In their experiment, Siedlecka and colleagues applied ice on the hand of their participants, right after the induction of the RHI (Siedlecka, Klimza, Łukowska, & Wierzchoń , 2014). Two distinct groups of participants were considered, one experimental group where the stroking to induce the illusion was timely and spatially synchronized, and a control group where the stroking was spatially incongruent.…”

Section: Rubber Hand Illusion and Painmentioning

confidence: 99%

Real, rubber or virtual: The vision of “one’s own” body as a means for pain modulation. A narrative review

Martini

2016

Consciousness and Cognition

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In the last few years a branch of pain research has been focussing on the modulatory effects of the vision of the body on pain perception. So, for instance, the vision of one's own real body has been proven to induce analgesic effects. On the other hand, bodily illusions such as the rubber hand illusion have provided new tools for the study of perceptual processes during altered body ownership states. Recently, new paradigms of body ownership made use of a technology that is going places both in clinical and in experimental settings, i.e. virtual reality. While the vision of one's own real body has been proven to yield compelling analgesic effects, slightly more controversial are those attributed to the vision of "owned" dummy bodies. This review will discuss the studies that examined the effects on pain perception of the vision of the own body, with or without body ownership illusions.

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Rubber Hand Illusion Reduces Discomfort Caused by Cold Stimulus

Cited by 39 publications

References 57 publications

Seeing an Embodied Virtual Hand is Analgesic Contingent on Colocation

Seeing an Embodied Virtual Hand is Analgesic Contingent on Colocation

Visually induced analgesia during massage treatment in chronic back pain patients

Real, rubber or virtual: The vision of “one’s own” body as a means for pain modulation. A narrative review

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