SnowWorld: Reducing Pain with Virtual Reality

Snow World is a virtual world that’s being used to help treat burn victims. The project is hosted at the University of Washington, where patients immerse themselves in the cold themed virtual game as a way to distract their minds from pain perception as they undergo treatment.

The project’s website explains:

“SnowWorld was specifically designed to help burn patients. Patients often report re-living their original burn experience during wound care, SnowWorld was designed to help put out the fire.

“Our logic for why VR will reduce pain is as follows. Pain perception has a strong psychological component. The same incoming pain signal can be interpreted as painful or not, depending on what the patient is thinking. Pain requires conscious attention.

“The essence of VR is the illusion users have of going inside the computer-generated environment. Being drawn into another world drains a lot of attentional resources, leaving less attention available to process pain signals. “

HIT Lab: Virtual Reality Pain Reduction

[via Herd]