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Real Pain Dulled In Virtual Worlds
26199 writes "The BBC is reporting on a novel use of Virtual Reality: as a distraction for burn victims who suffer excruciating pain during daily dressing changes. What's most interesting is that it actually works. Another use of VR discussed is in the treatment of patients suffering Post Traumatic Stress Disorder; memories can be relived until they are accepted."
... this part of the article rubs me the wrong way: :-/
In collaboration with Cornell University in New York, Hoffman has built a virtual reality programme that is a simulation of the events of 9/11 designed to desensitise the patient to the events of that day.
It just seems too "Clockwork Orange" to me...
- "Nobody came out that night, not one was ever seen. But Old Man Stauf is waiting there, crazy sick and mean!"
if this means that in the distant future, I won't occupy the whole nursing staff for 15 minutes, while they try to give me a shot?
Yes, I still have this childish behavior, because I don't like needles, and I don't like going into shock, which is what happens every time; yet, I don't want to be a nuisance.
My arm is hurting right now, just thinking about this whole topic...
I took an anxiety disorders class with one of the most famous voices in PTSD (McNally), so IANAP but IW a student of a psychologist.
One of the aspects of virtual reality treatments for phobias (we didn't study its use for PTSD) is that the patient is always accompanied by their psychologist, and they always have the option of opting out, even mid-simulation. And a nice fact of psychology is that if you have a feeling of control (whether you have control or not), you're less likely to run away. So while many may be too fearful to go through with the treatment, it happens in a supportive, controled environment, and that can be very helpful. The result may well be better than what we've got now, since PTSD's not easy to treat.
Here I was reading Tad Williams Otherland where one of the characters (Orlando Gardiner), is very ill and spends most of his time in a virtual world as an escape from reality.
Is this science following fiction ?
So does Anonymous Coward have good karma?
Ok troll.
I can tell you I just got out of the hospital after having a tension pnuemothorax (life threatening)and I can tell you that morphine is about as useless as a nun with two tits. Might as well just smoke some 7up (the *good* addicts will know what I mean).
Morphine is useless. It does nothing but make you want better drugs. The pain is still there. A good hit of some BC Bud would do much better. Plus, I can't walk straight after morphine.
Dr Hoffman believes pain contains a significant psychological element which is why distracting thoughts by virtual reality lends itself so well to pain control.
"Pain requires conscious attention..."
I've bought into this idea ever since the day I was curious and watched a mosquito land on my shoulder, get into its stance and pierce my skin. I was really shocked at how much it hurt in that one instance.
RTFM; please, I beg you.
The memory playback is a nice (but scary) idea, but I don't think it could ever be implemented correctly. If the plan is to play memories until a patient accepts what happened, a new memory program/video/experience would have to be generated for every patient.
A shooting victim would need a different experience than a burning building survivor, who would need a different experience than the train wreck survivor that comes in the next day. Since the situations would have to be fairly specific for each individual case, this would be nearly impossible to implement.
Also, if each different video/experience is produced, why not play it on a television? Even a big screen, if you want. I know the goal of the VR is to immerse the subject in the virtual world, but I don't know that it would be that much more effective than good old fashioned photos, videos, and psychiatry.
While VR pain relief may work to some degree initially, once the novelty wears off, or on an off-day when you just can't get interested in its "game", you'll probably find yourself screaming with pain.
Should I ever find myself in such an unfortunate situation, may God have mercy on me and set me up with an MD who will prescribe adequate opioid pain relievers. Currently that is the only thing that works, period.
Too often these days MDs are paranoid about prescribing opioid pain killers, what with the DEA breathing down their necks. See The DEA's Disastrous War Against Pain-Treating Drugs for example. It is customary to encourage the patient to grin and bear it or to seek pain relief through alternative therapies like meditation etc.
I myself have had minor surgery were they'll give you plenty of local anesthetic during the actual procedure; then they send you home with instructions to take tylenol. When the anesthetic wears off, the pain kicks in. It is only by whining and complaining that they'll prescribe an opioid painkiller, and unless you go to the ER (and sometimes even if you do) you'll be in pain for hours more until all the paperwork and procedures are done to get the prescription filled.
Chronic pain patients are in a real bind these days. They cruelty towards them by denying them long-term opioid pain relief is unspeakable.
Having said that the problem of addiction to the VR, as you mentioned, is a real one. People become addicted to all sorts of activities, gambling, extreme sports, and sex to name a few.
VR is realtively new, and being used for a treatment for pain should undergo studies to check to see if addiction may be a problem, or if there are any other adverse effects...like the flaming slashdotter!
If this treatment can truly help deal with survivor guilt, then it is a very useful therapy.
Harpo Tunnel Syndrome--my wrist feels funny.
They use VR and graphics technology to simulate the visual and auditory hallucinations that sometimes accompany these diseases. NewScientist had a small writeup
Please ignore the above comment in favor of the corrected comment below; I must learn not to post after having three beers, as I tend to mismatch HTML tags.
As a bonus for your patience, I've added a few links that lend support for the idea that physical and emotional pain are similar.
Physical pain (like that of the burn victims) is one thing; emotional pain is something else entirely.
There was a recent study (posted here?) that suggests that both physical and emotional pain are produced by the same mechanisms in the brain.
When you think about this, it makes sense: why would the organism produce -- and "pay" both the additional R&D on a species level, and the additional "construction" costs on an individual level -- an entirely separate faculty rather than adapt on already at hand?
Not only that, the reason an organism feels physical pain, and the reason it feels emotional pain are pretty much the same: both serve to signal to the organism that its current activity, in its current environment, is detrimental to the organism. A burning pain in my finger tells me that either I should modify my activity -- by moving the finger --, or the environment -- by moving the stove-top the finger is touching.
Similarly, emotional pain -- feelings of guilt, or rejection, or etc., -- exist pretty much to tell me that I'm earning the ire of my fellows, and that my ancestors became my ancestors by virtue of not doing those ire-raising things. Those organisms that too often ignored pain, either physical or emotional, of course failed to become ancestors by virtue of that, and so the genes for ignoring pain tend not to have propagated as much as the genes for heeding pain.
So if physical pain and emotional pain exists to do the same thing -- essentially behavior modification -- and if evidence exists that they are produced by the same structures in the brain, why do we tend to take for granted that they are not the same things?
Part of the reason, of course, is that emotional pain can last far longer than (many forms of) physical pain. My guess is that this is partly because emotional behaviors -- such as social awkwardness or shyness -- are resistant to change, and part -- as with grief -- is due to reinforcement by memory. I'll further guess that this reinforcement by memory is to some degree an "unintended" side effect of the greater precision of human memory.
Why are certain social behaviors resistant to change? Probably this is also an evolutionary adaptation -- research on pecking order in primates suggests that there are genetic components to social dominance hierarchies (proximally mediated by hormones, so that changes in hormone level by human researchers can subvert the hierarchy). Why is it adaptive to reinforce the social hierarchy even to the point of making the subordinates feel "bad"? Because feeling bad is preferable to challenging the hierarchy and literally having your head torn off. A geek who asks a girl who's "out of his league" for a date may only risk being laughed at today, but his reluctance may stem from an ancestor whose penalty for flirting with her might well have been death at the hands of the alpha male.
But I also suspect that the main reason that we see physical and emotional pain as being different is that we see emotional pain as uniquely human, something that separates us from "the animals". This desire for separation from "animals" (scare quotes because, of course, humans are a kind of animal and not an image of God) seems to be a strongly engrained trait at least in the Judeo-Christian tradition -- as is the traditional Judeo-Christian belief in mind-body dualism. Since we know that animals feel physical pain but are less informed about the animals' psychological worlds, it perhaps predictable that we would see emotional pain
Opinions on the Twiddler2 hand-held keyboard?
I found them at a garage sale at a house in Escondio, CA - being sold by a family that as far as I could tell, spoke no english at all. The titles and the covers looked interesting, and the subtitles detailing "Neuro-Linguistic Programming" seemed like they would fit right into my occult collection anyhow, so I purchased them.
As I said, the covers were interesting - all of the book's covers have a strange, near psychedelic flavor to them - fanciful images of dragons and wizards (though the last book, which has the latest publication date, drops this look in favor of a more refined outdoor scene of gloomy mountains in the backdrop, a green meadow with colorful flowers and a waterfall in the foreground, with a "transparent" profile of a person where everything is tinted "lighter" through it). I only got about halfway through what I thought was likely the first book (being of the earliest publication date), "Frogs into PRINCES". I believe this to be the only book I have ever read that screwed with my mind, in a very strange way.
As I was reading it, I was also trying to use some of the techniques, because they seemed like very powerful tools, for both internal and external use. As an example, one of these tools involved recognizing body language, and using that in opposition to what you were saying (simple example, nodding your head "yes" while discussing something in a negative tone, or disagreeing with someone) - this was a tool by which you could convey information to others to stimulate them to perform certain things in a certain manner. There were other techniques of a similar nature, some which you could use internally.
As I read, my SO (now my wife) was telling my that I was changing - that I acted differently since starting to read the book. She asked me to stop reading the book, which I did, because I could feel this change as well - and it bothered me. After I stopped reading the book, I felt that a curtain or something had lifted, like a slight fog or something.
Now, I realize that this is just a anecdotal story, and that it carries no weight from an objective standpoint - take it as you will. I have kept these books, though, and I intend one day to try reading them again, knowing my prior experience.
What you describe of NLP I never got to in the books - perhaps it was in a later chapter or in one of the other volumes which I didn't read? The technique, though, sounds like something from NLP. I still don't know what or why these books are - they seem like self-help books, but if they tend to affect others like they did me, I wonder just what NLP really is about - and what its ultimate use could be? Personally, I wasn't looking for a self-help or self-change book - but I was interested in the idea of "hacking my mind", so to speak (yeah, I know that sounds like a contradiction. I was only looking for changing myself in a controlled manner for the hell of it and to learn how to do it in a different manner, not because I felt I needed it - probably not a good reason, now that I look back on it)...
Reason is the Path to God - Anon