Metaplasticity and Inner Body Schemas: VR Pharmakon for Chronic Pain
Symposium:
Session Title:
- An Alembic of Transformation: Virtual Reality as Agent of Change
Presentation Title:
- Metaplasticity and Inner Body Schemas: VR Pharmakon for Chronic Pain
Presenter(s):
Venue(s):
Abstract:
Panel: An Alembic of Transformation: Virtual Reality as Agent of Change
Immersive VR has been explored over the past decade as a “non-pharmacological analgesic” for acute pain during short periods of time. The mechanism that explains VR’s efficacy is thought to be “pain distraction,” with VR serving as a rich way to direct attentional resources away from pain. This outward directing of perceptual and sensorial attention — more effective than videogames, and on par with opiods — is a provocative use of VR. Yet pain is notorious as a category-defying experience, its intensity, as Elaine Scarry posits, defying even the most basic linguistic expression.
At the same time, research in how longer-term pain is related to body image and body schema grew from use of a more basic technology to produce analgesic effects for phantom pain – mirrors. Still other forms of technology initiated by the work of Paul Bach y Rita demonstrates how sensory substitution demonstrates that our neurological systems are plastic or not as hard-wired as it was once believed.
In these arenas of research, however, the role of inner or interoceptive senses, as Drew Leder describes in The Absent Body, have rarely been explored. A century earlier, Hermann von Helmholtz found that we have 100,000 times more resources dedicated for sensing inner states, compared to those states derived from the so-called five exteroceptive senses. For the most part, our ability to attend to our inner states is necessarily quiescent, lest they overwhelm our conscious awareness. However, humans have the ability to learn how to access at least some of these inner states, from yogic traditions to those enabled by biofeedback and newer technologies.
This paper proposes that novel uses of VR for chronic pain, both artistic and therapeutic, built upon a new paradigm that ostensibly inverts “pain distraction,” can fruitfully extend notions of body image and body schema through the ways VR can enable and enhance awarenesses of otherwise quiescent inner states. The focus on aesthetic aspects of VR as they relate to mechanisms thought to be at work, from experiencing the sublime and dissociative states to neuro- and metaplasticity.
