A team of experts from the Faculty of Health and Life Sciences at the University of York St John, in the United Kingdom, has found that, under certain conditions, the use of virtual reality devices can reduce the sensation of pain, so in the future it may be possible to adapt this technology for use as a kind of non-pharmacological analgesic .
As indicated in a study published in the journal Royal Society Open Science , these researchers asked a group of volunteers to place one of their hands in a container of water at 1 ° C for as long as possible. Thus, they observed that when they wore a virtual reality device in which a game was played, their perception of pain was lower and they took more seconds to remove the limb from the container. This effect was further increased when the virtual experience was more immersive, for example, if sound was added to the game and if the user was allowed to participate in the action.
Although it is not yet known with certainty how the physiological and psychological mechanisms involved in this phenomenon work , other experiments carried out previously had already shown that the capacity for abstraction that video games facilitate in certain circumstances allows to alleviate physical and emotional pain, as if acting as a kind of distraction . In this work, the scientists point out that more trials are needed to check, for example, to what extent this technique could be effective in other conditions or the role that the inclusion of sound plays in reducing pain.
Image: Sergey Galyonkin via Wikimedia / CC
