ArticlePain2020
Virtual reality: physiological and behavioral mechanisms to increase individual pain tolerance limits.
Article in Pain, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. It is linked to 2 registered trials, which are not on this map. Cited by 40 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neural Mechanisms of Immersive Virtual Reality in Chronic Pain
Neural Mechanisms of Immersive Virtual Reality in Chronic Pain
Who cites it
40 citing papers in PubMed, 92 citations in OpenAlex.
- The Effect of Immersive Virtual Reality on Anterograde Amnesia and Subjective Pain During Procedures: A Within-Subject Randomized Controlled Study.Anesthesia and analgesia · 2026Trial
- Effect of Virtual Reality Hypnosis on Pain Threshold and Neurophysiological and Autonomic Biomarkers in Healthy Volunteers: Prospective Randomized Crossover Study.Journal of medical Internet research · 2022Trial
- Immediate and Short-Term Effects of Nature-Based Immersive Virtual Reality During Dry Needling: A Single-Blinded Randomized Controlled Trial.Journal of clinical medicine · 2026Article
- Virtual Reality-Based Pain Modulation in Subacute Musculoskeletal Injury: Functional Near-Infrared Spectroscopy Study of Neural and Behavioral Correlates.JMIR serious games · 2026Article
- A critical role of affective content in the analgesic effect of virtual reality: a cross-sectional within-subject study.Lancet regional health. Americas · 2026Article
- Nature exposure reduces self-reported pain: a systematic review and meta-analysis.Nature. Mental health · 2026Article
- Personalized virtual reality in hemodialysis patients: a multicenter pilot study.Clinical kidney journal · 2026Article
- Digital Doses: Virtual Reality Use for Perioperative Pain and Anxiety in Patients Undergoing Hand Surgery.Journal of hand surgery global online · 2025Article
- The High-Risk Model of Threat Perception Modulates Learning of Placebo and Nocebo Effects and Functional Somatic Disorders.Brain sciences · 2025Review
- Early health economic analysis of virtual reality therapy for pain management after surgery.International journal of surgery (London, England) · 2025Article
- Reply to Daungsupawong and Wiwanitkit.Pain · 2025Article
- Telehealth virtual reality intervention reduces chronic pain in a randomized crossover study.NPJ digital medicine · 2025Article
- Article
- Examining the Feasibility, Acceptability, and Preliminary Efficacy of an Immersive Virtual Reality-Assisted Lower Limb Strength Training for Knee Osteoarthritis: Mixed Methods Pilot Randomized Controlled Trial.JMIR serious games · 2024Article
- "Virtual reality fixed me": A case report of the use of virtual reality during intensive interdisciplinary pain treatment.Journal of pediatric rehabilitation medicine · 2024Article
- Effectiveness of Virtual Reality on Rehabilitation of Chronic Non-Specific Low Back Pain Patients.Healthcare (Basel, Switzerland) · 2024Article
- Low-Intensity Focused Ultrasound to the Human Dorsal Anterior Cingulate Attenuates Acute Pain Perception and Autonomic Responses.The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience · 2024Article
- System Architecture for VR Yoga Therapy Platform with 6-DoF Whole-Body Avatar Tracking.... IEEE International Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Virtual Reality. IEEE International Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Virtual Reality · 2024Article
- Enhancing the comfort of hospitalized elderly patients: pain management strategies for painful nursing procedures.Frontiers in medicine · 2024Article
- Sensors and Devices Guided by Artificial Intelligence for Personalized Pain Medicine.Cyborg and bionic systems (Washington, D.C.) · 2024Review
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
9 authors at 2 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
Abstract
abstractImmersive virtual reality (VR) consists of immersion in artificial environments through the use of real-time render technologies and the latest generation devices. The users feel just as immersed as they would feel in an everyday life situation, and this sense of presence seems to have therapeutic potentials. However, the VR mechanisms remain only partially known. This study is novel in that, for the first time in VR research, appropriate controls for VR contexts, immersive characteristics (ie, control VR), and multifaceted objective and subjective outcomes were included in a within-subject study design conducted on healthy participants. Participants received heat thermal stimulations to determine how VR can increase individual heat-pain tolerance limits (primary outcome) measured in degrees Celsius and seconds while recording concurrent autonomic responses. We also assessed changes in pain unpleasantness, mood, situational anxiety, and level of enjoyment (secondary outcomes). The VR induced a net gain in heat-pain tolerance limits that was paralleled by an increase of the parasympathetic responses. VR improved mood, situational anxiety, and pain unpleasantness when participants perceived the context as enjoyable, but these changes did not influence the increases in pain tolerance limits. Distraction increased pain tolerance limits but did not induce such mood and physiological changes. Immersive VR has been anecdotally applied to improve acute symptoms in contexts such as battlefield, emergency, and operating rooms. This study provides a mechanistic framework for VR as a low-risk, nonpharmacological intervention, which regulates autonomic, affective (mood and situational anxiety), and evaluative (subjective pain and enjoyment ratings) responses associated with acute pain.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.