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  4. Size and Viewpoint of an Embodied Virtual Body Affect the Processing of Painful Stimuli
 
research article

Size and Viewpoint of an Embodied Virtual Body Affect the Processing of Painful Stimuli

Romano, Daniele
•
Llobera, Joan  
•
Blanke, Olaf  
2015
The journal of pain : official journal of the American Pain Society

Looking at one's own body might induce visual analgesia. However, the cognitive and physiological mechanisms underlying such visual analgesia are unknown. Because body and pain representations in the brain are multisensory, and have been reported to partially overlap, we herein investigated whether experimentally-induced changes in bodily self-consciousness (BSC) modulate pain. We measured physiological responses to pain (skin conductance response [SCR]) and the subjective experience of pain, under conditions of manipulated BSC. First we investigated whether looking at a virtual body that was associated with BSC (embodiment) reduced responses to pain, which revealed the effect of BSC on pain processing. Second, we manipulated the visual size of the virtual body during painful stimulation, a procedure known to modulate pain processing when used with biological bodies, but never studied with embodied avatars. We found reduced SCR in conditions of illusory embodiment, and a negative correlation between virtual body size and SCR, whereas subjective pain ratings were not affected by these manipulations. These results suggest that pain processing is modulated during illusory states of BSC and that these changes are greater for larger virtual bodies, which sustains that pain and its physiological mechanisms are associated with the bodily self, opening promising avenues for future pain treatments.

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Type
research article
DOI
10.1016/j.jpain.2015.11.005
Web of Science ID

WOS:000372672400008

Author(s)
Romano, Daniele
Llobera, Joan  
Blanke, Olaf  
Date Issued

2015

Publisher

Churchill Livingstone

Published in
The journal of pain : official journal of the American Pain Society
Volume

17

Issue

3

Start page

350

End page

8

Subjects

Full body illusion

•

pain

•

analgesia

•

body representation

•

skin conductance response

Editorial or Peer reviewed

REVIEWED

Written at

EPFL

EPFL units
CNP  
LNCO  
Available on Infoscience
March 3, 2016
Use this identifier to reference this record
https://infoscience.epfl.ch/handle/20.500.14299/124553
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