A Stand-Alone Augmented Reality Intervention for Chronic Pain using Embodied Systolic Stimulation

Chronic pain presents a tremendous personal, societal, and financial burden. Treatment options are often limited to managing symptoms as opposed to treating the causes, and the consequences of pharmacological treatments can be immensely harmful as evidenced by the on-going opioid epidemic. Virtual Reality interventions and digital therapeutics provide a new tool for therapists but are currently limited to pain-distraction or digitizing traditional approaches that are similarly focused on pain management. However, recent research suggests that potentially neurorestorative, nonpharmacological treatments are conceivable using personalized, embodied, multimodal feedback. In particular, i) providing visual feedback of the affected body part, ii) increasing its embodiment using multisensory stimulation, and iii) timing stimulation to the systole of the ECG cycle have been linked with analgesic effects in induced acute and chronic pain. Based on these findings and methods, we here propose a stand-alone solution that aims to provide neurorestorative feedback for individuals suffering from chronic pain by visualizing interoceptive signals and mapping them onto the patients affected body part using Augmented Reality, tapping into the three aforementioned principles. Our initial findings indicate the feasibility, acceptance, and stimulus adherence of the device and intervention, whose efficacy will be evaluated in an upcoming randomized controlled clinical trial.