Fundació de Recerca Clínic Barcelona-Institut D'investigacions Biomèdiques August Pi I Sunyer, Barcelona, Spain.
Institute of Psychology Polish Academy of Sciences, Warsaw, Poland.
Sci Rep. 2023 Jul 3;13(1):10719. doi: 10.1038/s41598-023-36861-3.
Chronic pain alters the experience of owning a body and leads to disturbances in bodily perception. We tested whether women with fibromyalgia (FM) are receptive to bodily illusions of owning a visible and progressively invisible body in immersive virtual reality (VR), and what modulates this experience. Twenty patients participated in two experimental sessions; each session included two conditions in a counterbalanced order. We found that patients with FM could indeed experience virtual embodiment. Sentiment analysis revealed significantly more positive reactions to the progressively invisible body, yet twice as many patients declared they preferred the illusion of a visible virtual body. A linear mixed model revealed that the strength of embodiment was positively associated with body perception disturbances and negatively associated with FM symptoms intensity. No effect of pain during the VR experience nor interoception awareness on embodiment was found. The results indicated that patients with FM are receptive to virtual bodily illusions and that the impact of the embodiment depends on affective reactions, the level of cognitive body distortions, and the intensity of symptoms. Importantly, there is a large variation among patients which should be considered in future VR-based interventions.
慢性疼痛改变了人们对身体的体验，导致身体感知障碍。我们测试了纤维肌痛（FM）女性是否能接受沉浸式虚拟现实（VR）中拥有可见和逐渐不可见身体的身体错觉，以及是什么调节了这种体验。20 名患者参加了两个实验环节；每个环节以交替的顺序包括两种条件。我们发现，FM 患者确实可以体验到虚拟体现。情感分析显示，对逐渐不可见身体的反应明显更为积极，但两倍多的患者表示他们更喜欢可见虚拟身体的错觉。线性混合模型显示，体现的强度与身体感知障碍呈正相关，与 FM 症状强度呈负相关。在 VR 体验过程中，疼痛和内感受意识对体现没有影响。结果表明，FM 患者对虚拟身体错觉有反应，而体现的影响取决于情感反应、认知身体扭曲程度和症状强度。重要的是，患者之间存在很大的差异，这在未来基于 VR 的干预措施中应该考虑到。
