Virtual embodiment in fibromyalgia.

ABSTRACT: Chronic pain alters the experience of owning a body and leads to disturbances in bodily perception. We tested whether women with fibromyalgia (FM) are receptive to bodily illusions of owning a visible and progressively invisible body in immersive virtual reality (VR), and what modulates this experience. Twenty patients participated in two experimental sessions; each session included two conditions in a counterbalanced order. We found that patients with FM could indeed experience virtual embodiment. Sentiment analysis revealed significantly more positive reactions to the progressively invisible body, yet twice as many patients declared they preferred the illusion of a visible virtual body. A linear mixed model revealed that the strength of embodiment was positively associated with body perc

SUBMITTER: Swidrak J 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10318080 | biostudies-literature | 2023 Jul

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature