Looking at the hand modulates the brain responses to nociceptive and non-nociceptive somatosensory stimuli but does not necessarily modulate their perception.

Abstract

Previous studies have suggested that looking at the hand can reduce the perception of pain and the magnitude of the ERPs elicited by nociceptive stimuli delivered onto the hand. In contrast, other studies have suggested that looking at the hand can increase tactile sensory discrimination performance, and enhance the magnitude of the ERPs elicited by tactile stimulation. These opposite effects could be related to differences in the crossmodal effects between vision, nociception, and touch. However, these differences could also be related to the use of different experimental designs. Importantly, most studies on the effects of vision on pain have relied on a mirror to create the illusion that the reflected hand is a direct view of the stimulated hand. Here, we compared the effects of direct versus mirror vision of the hand versus an object on the perception and ERPs elicited by non-nociceptive and nociceptive stimuli. We did not observe any significant effect of vision on the perceived intensity. However, vision of the hand did reduce the magnitude of the nociceptive N240 wave, and enhanced the magnitude of the non-nociceptive P200. Our results confirm that vision of the body differentially affects nociceptive and non-nociceptive processing, but question the robustness of visual analgesia.