Using Illusions to Decrease Pain

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Table of Contents

Goals of the Experiment

To reduce the burden of complex regional pain syndrome (CRPS):

CRPS is a chronic pain that lasts for more than a half a year (Stanton-Hicks, 2018);
The pain is a manifestation of an injury (Stanton-Hicks, 2018);
It often has influence on only a single limb (Stanton-Hicks, 2018);
Research suggests that CRPS emerges as a result of damage incurred by nervous systems (Boesch et al., 2016).

Goals of the Experiment

Visual manipulation of a painful region of the body has the potential to decrease perceived pain.
Mirror therapy is a cost-effective solution and the desired illusionary intervention in this experiment;
- Costly alternatives, such as the use of Virtual Reality has not shown significant benefits (Harvie et al., 2020).
The idea is that painful limb is hidden behind a mirror and the patient sees the movement of the other limb that is healthy.
After perceiving that there are no visual distortions of the painful limb, pain starts to decline.

Proposed Solution

If a movement of a limb causes unbearable pain, then the patient may not wish to proceed with the experiment.
Some chronic pains may be caused by physical damage to the tissue, and therefore, manipulating the body part’s perception may not help (Pamment & Aspell, 2017).
Impatience of individuals who expect immediate results may negatively contribute to the results of the experiment.

Possible Factors Affecting the Results

The experiment will succeed in most cases, because:
- Pain is often subjective.
- Nervous system is responsible for pain, illusions may act as a painkiller.
In cases when employing illusions for treatment of pain is possible, illusions are a better alternative to using opioids, because:
- Opioids have many adverse effects, including both physical and cognitive outcomes (Chung et al., 2019).
- Opioids may cause dependence, which may later result in substance abuse (Chung et al., 2019).

Discussion

Boesch, E., Bellan, V., Moseley, G. L., & Stanton, T. R. (2016). The effect of bodily illusions on clinical pain: A systematic review and meta-analysis. Pain, 157(3), 516-529.
Chung, C. P., Callahan, S. T., Cooper, W. O., Dupont, W. D., Murray, K. T., Franklin, A. D., … & Ray, W. A. (2019). Individual short‐acting opioids and the risk of opioid‐related adverse events in adolescents. Pharmacoepidemiology and Drug Safety, 28(11), 1448-1456.
Harvie, D. S., Smith, R. T., Moseley, G. L., Meulders, A., Michiels, B., & Sterling, M. (2020). Illusion-enhanced virtual reality exercise for neck pain: A replicated single case series. The Clinical Journal of Pain, 36(2), 101-109.
Pamment, J., & Aspell, J. E. (2017). Putting pain out of mind with an ‘out of body’ illusion. European Journal of Pain, 21(2), 334-342.
Stanton-Hicks, M. (2018). Complex regional pain syndrome. In J. Cheng & R. W. Rosenquist (Eds.), Fundamentals of Pain Medicine (pp. 211-220). Cham, Switzerland: Springer.