Altering pain-related brain activity, it could function as a digital anesthetic

People's physical response to pain is significantly dampened when they're immersed in virtual reality, and the effect could be enough to inhibit discomfort during painful medical procedures.

Researcher Hunter Hoffman and colleagues at the University of Washington in Seattle have shown that virtual reality (VR) dramatically changes how the brain physically registers pain, not just how people subjected to pain perceive incoming signals.

"What this study shows is that virtual reality is not only changing the way people interpret the incoming pain, it is changing the actual activity in the brain," says Hoffman

More: www.betterhumans.com...

Appreciate the link!

My daughter's working with one of the biofeedback games (we saw demonstrated at a convention recently) -- I'm not sure if she's got it up and running yet, but it did help the people who dropped by the booth.

I'm also looking into TENS units technology. She has chronic pain syndrome from endometriosis (yes, they've done radical surgeries and she still has pain) and possibly from fibromyalgia. We've about exhausted all the good medical options and I'm ready to go into the Other Stuff.

[edit on 25-6-2004 by Byrd]