Romano Daniele, Llobera Joan, Blanke Olaf
University of Milan-Bicocca, Department of Psychology, Milan, Italy; NeuroMi, Milan Center for Neuroscience, Milan, Italy; Laboratory of Cognitive Neuroscience, École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), Lausanne, Switzerland; Center for Neuroprosthetics, École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), Lausanne, Switzerland.
Laboratory of Cognitive Neuroscience, École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), Lausanne, Switzerland; Center for Neuroprosthetics, École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), Lausanne, Switzerland; Immersive Interaction Group, École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), Lausanne, Switzerland.
J Pain. 2016 Mar;17(3):350-8. doi: 10.1016/j.jpain.2015.11.005. Epub 2015 Dec 2.
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.
We show that BSC affects the processing of painful stimuli with induction of different levels of pain responses for embodied virtual bodies of different sizes. Our data reveal novel links between pain and self and suggest that embodied virtual bodies are a promising technique for future pain treatments.
审视自己的身体可能会诱发视觉镇痛。然而，这种视觉镇痛背后的认知和生理机制尚不清楚。由于大脑中身体和疼痛的表征是多感官的，且据报道存在部分重叠，我们在此研究了实验诱导的身体自我意识（BSC）变化是否会调节疼痛。我们在BSC被操纵的条件下测量了对疼痛的生理反应（皮肤电导反应[SCR]）和疼痛的主观体验。首先，我们研究了观察与BSC相关的虚拟身体（具身化）是否会减少对疼痛的反应，这揭示了BSC对疼痛处理的影响。其次，我们在疼痛刺激期间操纵虚拟身体的视觉大小，这一过程在用于生物身体时已知可调节疼痛处理，但从未在具身化化身中进行过研究。我们发现在虚幻具身化条件下SCR降低，且虚拟身体大小与SCR之间呈负相关，而主观疼痛评分不受这些操纵的影响。这些结果表明，在BSC的虚幻状态下疼痛处理会受到调节，且对于更大的虚拟身体，这些变化更大，这支持了疼痛及其生理机制与身体自我相关的观点，为未来的疼痛治疗开辟了有前景的途径。
我们表明，BSC会影响疼痛刺激的处理，对不同大小的具身化虚拟身体诱导出不同水平的疼痛反应。我们的数据揭示了疼痛与自我之间的新联系，并表明具身化虚拟身体是未来疼痛治疗的一种有前景的技术。
