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Virtual embodiment in fibromyalgia

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 experie...

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Autores principales: Świdrak, Justyna, Arias, Ana, de la Calle, Edgar Rodriguez, Collado Cruz, Antonio, Sanchez-Vives, Maria V.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Nature Publishing Group UK 2023
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10318080/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37400503
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-023-36861-3
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author Świdrak, Justyna
Arias, Ana
de la Calle, Edgar Rodriguez
Collado Cruz, Antonio
Sanchez-Vives, Maria V.
author_facet Świdrak, Justyna
Arias, Ana
de la Calle, Edgar Rodriguez
Collado Cruz, Antonio
Sanchez-Vives, Maria V.
author_sort Świdrak, Justyna
collection PubMed
description 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.
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spelling pubmed-103180802023-07-05 Virtual embodiment in fibromyalgia Świdrak, Justyna Arias, Ana de la Calle, Edgar Rodriguez Collado Cruz, Antonio Sanchez-Vives, Maria V. Sci Rep Article 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. Nature Publishing Group UK 2023-07-03 /pmc/articles/PMC10318080/ /pubmed/37400503 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-023-36861-3 Text en © The Author(s) 2023 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) .
spellingShingle Article
Świdrak, Justyna
Arias, Ana
de la Calle, Edgar Rodriguez
Collado Cruz, Antonio
Sanchez-Vives, Maria V.
Virtual embodiment in fibromyalgia
title Virtual embodiment in fibromyalgia
title_full Virtual embodiment in fibromyalgia
title_fullStr Virtual embodiment in fibromyalgia
title_full_unstemmed Virtual embodiment in fibromyalgia
title_short Virtual embodiment in fibromyalgia
title_sort virtual embodiment in fibromyalgia
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10318080/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37400503
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-023-36861-3
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