Pain Masking by Contextual Modification in VR/AR Environment

Virtual reality (VR) experiences are increasingly employed as tools for pain management. Conventional VR-based pain reduction strategies rely on distraction of the user's attention from the source of the stimulus. However, these strategies are less effective for individuals with difficulty shifting their attention, highlighting the need for alternative methods. This study introduces a novel approach to pain reduction by modifying the appearance of the stimulus source, altering the context as less unpleasant (contextual modification). This method let users to misinterpret the source of the stimulus. The experiment used an animation of a cat scratching a user as a new context, and investigated whether the discomfort threshold, stimulus interpretation, discomfort level, and intensity of discomfort generated by electrical stimulation could be affected. We conducted this evaluation in both VR and augmented reality (AR) environments. Results indicated that the simultaneous presentation of cat animation synchronized with stimulus increased the discomfort threshold and reduced discomfort and pain compared to the presentation of electrical stimuli alone. The effectiveness of this intervention diminished when a temporal delay was set between the stimulus and the animation.