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Session: Sensors and pain
Session starts: Friday 25 January, 10:30
Presentation starts: 11:00
Room: Lecture room 558

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Robert-Jan Doll (Centre for Human Drug Research)
Ingrid Koopmans (Centre for Human Drug Research)
Geert Jan Groeneveld (Centre for Human Drug Research)

Abstract:
The perception of pain is a complex combination of neurological, physiological, and psychological factors. Analgesics can be used to inhibit the perception of pain by not only modulating the neurophysiological components of pain (i.e., nociception), but also the affective components. At the Centre for Human Drug Research (CHDR), we developed and validated a battery of pain-tasks (PainCart) primarily targeting nociception. While the PainCart is suitable for studying the pharmacological effects on the nociceptive system, a task studying more affective components of pain is missing. Here, we propose a task which can potentially capture the affective component of pain by means of Virtual Reality. One of the tasks in the PainCart is an electrical stimulation task. During this task, the amplitude of the electrical stimuli is continuously increased. Subjects indicate the momentary perceived pain by a Visual Analogue Scale (VAS). Enhancing the perceived stimulus strength (but not the actual presented strength) might be achieved by means of visual and auditory feedback. In a Virtual Reality environment, subjects are seated in a virtual environment that looks identical to the ‘real’ environment. Furniture, such as the chair and the PainCart are included in the simulation. Two electrodes are placed on the left tibial bone in both environments. During the stimulation task, the electrical stimulation is visually represented by sparks and skin burn in an increasing intensity. Matching sound effects with increasing intensity are played alongside the visualization. Increasing and decreasing the slope in which the visual and auditory representation is presented to a subject might affect their pain perception. Here, we will present the preliminary results of a study where subjects are immersed in the Virtual Reality environment. Electrical stimulation will be applied as described above and subjects are presented various versions of visual/auditory feedback in a randomized order. The versions will include a placebo-variant of the feedback (i.e., no feedback on stimulus strength), and variants with varying rates at which the intensity of the feedback is presented. The pain detection and pain tolerance thresholds will be compared between the different versions.