Touching virtual water only (no real water/no tactile feedback)
HMD, pain
CASTLE
Participants placed a VR Head Mounted Display (HMD) on their head. The HMD blocked their view of the real world. In the HMD, in the current study, participants could look around and see themselves (virtual hands only), in a castle room in virtual reality and could see a large “visual only” computer generated virtual wooden bowl filled with animated virtual water within reach of their virtual hand. Wiggling their real fingers and/or moving their real hands correspondingly moved their virtual hands in VR, allowing participants to interact with virtual object images via their virtual hands. In this treatment condition of the current study, during brief thermal pain stimuli to the dorsal foot, while in VR, healthy volunteer participants put their virtual hand into the “visual only” bowl of computer generated animated water in the virtual world (their real hand simultaneously reached into the air in the real world during this “visual only” VR condition, “no real water”).After receiving a brief thermal stimulus while in ”VR + No real water”, participants took off the VR HMD and answered the pain ratings, using the pen and paper GRS pain ratings, followed by sense of presence and embodiment ratings. The pain ratings and subsequent instructions phase lasted approximately 5 min, and served as the “wash out” period between VR treatments, to help minimize carryover effects.