When the avatar takes away the back pain

Just a few days ago, we wrote about the use of VR in therapy. Another new scientific consortium is now investigating the possibilities of using virtual reality (VR) to treat chronic pain. Their aim is to develop a medical product that uses VR technologies to modify neuronal networks (neuromatrix) in the brain in such a way that chronic pain is alleviated as permanently as possible.

Chronic back pain, blunt trauma, fibromyalgia, phantom pain, CRPS and burns are just some of the complaints that can be treated following the successful validation study.

The head of the project called ReliefVR is Yevgenyia Nedilko from the company Videoreality. The company specialises in VR applications. The scientific partners of the project are the Centre for Interdisciplinary Pain Medicine (CIS) at Würzburg University Hospital and the Chair of Psychology I at Julius-Maximilians-Universität Würzburg (JMU).

Out-of-body experience through VR

"Patients should initially have the feeling that they have a virtual body or avatar that is in the same position as their real body," explains Nedilko. The scientists then want to change this perspective so that a so-called out-of-body experience can arise. In this way, the avatar takes away the back pain, so to speak.

"We suspect that it is possible to change body perception in this way," explained Heike Rittner, Head of the ZIS. This would probably enable patients with chronic back pain to achieve a state in which the perceived pain is reduced and the pain-free level of movement is increased.

"On this basis, specially designed movement exercises can trigger a new, healthy learning process," said Ivo Käthner, who heads the sub-project at the Chair of Psychology I at JMU.

The Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) is initially funding the project with up to 200,000 euros. If everything goes well, a clinical feasibility study is scheduled to start in 2023.

It is not the first research and application that aims to alleviate pain via VR, as many Show blog entries with us.

Source: aerzteblatt / ReliefVR