Video games, virtual reality have analgesic effects

May 6, 2010

When children and adults with acute and chronic pain become immersed in video game action, they receive some analgesic benefit, according to research presented May 7 at the American Pain Society's annual meeting in Baltimore, MD.

Researchers from the University of Southern California (USC) and the University of Maryland reported that virtual reality (VR) is proving to be effective in reducing anxiety and acute pain caused by medical procedures and could be useful for treating chronic pain.

"Virtual reality produces a modulating effect that is endogenous, so the analgesic influence is not simply a result of distraction but may also impact how the brain responds to painful stimuli," said Jeffrey I. Gold, Ph.D., an associate professor of anesthesiology and pediatrics at USC's Keck School of Medicine and director of the Pediatric Pain Management Clinic at Children's Hospital Los Angeles. "The focus is drawn to the game, not the pain or the medical procedure, while the virtual reality experience engages visual and other senses."

While the exact mechanistic/neurobiological basis responsible for the VR analgesic effect of video games is unknown, he noted, a likely explanation is the immersive, attention-grabbing, multisensory, and gaming nature of VR. These aspects of VR may produce an endogenous modulatory effect, which involves a network of higher cortical and subcortical regions known to be associated with attention, distraction, and emotion.

Lynnda Dahlquist, Ph.D., a clinical child psychologist and professor of psychology at the University of Maryland, reviewed her most recent laboratory studies examining the use of VR and other computer and video game technologies to provide distraction-based acute pain management.

The use of video games and virtual reality distraction (VRD) technology for procedural pain management in both preschoolers and elementary to middle school children yielded promising results in increasing pain tolerance "with potentially significant future clinical applications for more effective pain reduction techniques for youth with chronic and acute pain," Dahlquist reported.

Children interacting with a virtual environment by watching video games demonstrated a small pain tolerance improvement during exposure to ice cold water stimulation, according to Dahlquist. But she recorded significantly greater pain tolerance for kids wearing specially equipped video helmets when they actually interacted with the virtual environment.

"Our aim is to know what about VRD makes it effective in pain tolerance lab studies with children and what are the best ways to use it for optimum results," explained Dahlquist, noting that any distraction is better than none at all in pain minimization.

VRD's impact on pain tolerance levels varied by children's ages, indicating that age may influence how effective video game interaction will be. "We must better understand at what ages VRD provides the greatest benefit in moderating acute pain and at what age, if any, that it can be too much or be limiting," she said.