Sound Makes Virtual Reality a More Powerful Painkiller
[Philip Lelyveld comment; they've quantified what I've known from decades of taking my radio / walkman / iPod to the dentist.]
Researchers at York St. John University in the U.K. say that they came to this conclusion after having a group of adults hold one hand in ice water as long as possible while playing a virtual reality game on an Oculus developer headset with and without sound.
The researchers found that people who played a racing game while hearing the sounds that went with it could tolerate the discomfort the longest, about 79 seconds. When they held a hand in ice water with virtual reality visuals but no sound, they lasted about 56 seconds. Both times the participants held a hand under water for much more time than when they tried to do so without using any VR at all—then, they lasted just an average of 30 seconds.
“I think any scenario, really, where you’re undergoing a short amount of pain in a clinical setting could potentially benefit,” Coxon says.
Sam Sharar, a professor of anesthesiology and pain medicine at the University of Washington who studies how virtual reality can be used to control pain, says the assumption has long been that patients have a fixed amount of conscious attention. If you’re feeling pain, using virtual reality at the same time can help divert conscious attention away to something more pleasurable, and it makes sense that audio would help make the experience even more immersive.
See the full story here: https://www.technologyreview.com/s/601120/sound-makes-virtual-reality-a-more-powerful-painkiller/#/set/id/601159/