Abstract
Changing the visual body appearance by use of as virtual reality system, funny mirror, or binocular glasses has been reported to be helpful in rehabilitation of pain. However, there are interindividual differences in the analgesic effect of changing the visual body image. We hypothesized that a negative body image associated with changing the visual body appearance causes interindividual differences in the analgesic effect although the relationship between the visual body appearance and analgesic effect has not been clarified. We investigated whether a negative body image associated with changes in the visual body appearance increased pain. Twenty-five healthy individuals participated in this study. To evoke a negative body image, we applied the method of rubber hand illusion. We created an “injured rubber hand” to evoke unpleasantness associated with pain, a “hairy rubber hand” to evoke unpleasantness associated with embarrassment, and a “twisted rubber hand” to evoke unpleasantness associated with deviation from the concept of normality. We also created a “normal rubber hand” as a control. The pain threshold was measured while the participant observed the rubber hand using a device that measured pain caused by thermal stimuli. Body ownership experiences were elicited by observation of the injured rubber hand and hairy rubber hand as well as the normal rubber hand. Participants felt more unpleasantness by observing the injured rubber hand and hairy rubber hand than the normal rubber hand and twisted rubber hand (p<0.001). The pain threshold was lower under the injured rubber hand condition than with the other conditions (p<0.001). We conclude that a negative body appearance associated with pain can increase pain sensitivity.
Highlights
Negative Body Image in Self-Body Perception rubber hands created the same level of body ownership illusion as the normal rubber hand
As the result of unpleasant feelings evoked by the illusion (Fig. 5), participants felt ‘‘unpleasantness associated with injury’’ in the injured rubber hand condition and participants felt ‘‘unpleasantness associated with embarrassment’’ and ‘‘unpleasantness associated with nonconformance to the ideal body shape’’ with the hairy rubber hand condition
The injured and hairy rubber hands created the same level of body ownership illusion as the normal rubber hand and evoked a more negative body image than the normal rubber hand
Summary
Hegedus et al found that looking at a rubber hand that was felt to be one’s own hand induced analgesia, which identified and remedied the problem of how to give pain stimulation experienced in Mohan’s experiment [13] In this way, it was clarified that body ownership can increase the analgesic effect of looking at the body. Concerning one’s body not conforming to the established idea of what a body should look like, discomfort with simulating sensorimotor incongruence evoked brain activityrelated pain [32,33] Based on these studies, we hypothesized that the three species of negative body image would increase physical pain because they could increase brain activity-related pain. The objective of this study was to identify specific types of negative body image that would worsen a perceived pain level
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