Researchers at Michigan University have combined ancient traditions of meditative breathing with modern technology, namely virtual reality headsets. The result, according to a new study from the team, is a reduction in pain perceptions, offering patients ways to reduce the use of painkillers. Unlike the meditative breath itself, the VR-based respiratory method triggers pain relievers in a completely different way.
Mindfulness and respiratory meditation has been widely studied and associated with various benefits, including reduction of pain. This new study is different from introducing new methods that combine practices with virtual realities and systems that produce deep environments.
Users wear a VR headset and guided through the respiratory process while watching their virtual replica of their lungs, which expand and deflate synchronous with participants. Both attentive respiratory varieties provide pain pain, but different mechanisms are playing.
The effect of painkillers is caused by modulation of brain parts called somatosensory cortex, which is a pain signal processed. Attentive breaths on their own works with interulation, which involves the destruction of someone’s attention into, reduce the ability of the cortex to process pain.
However, deep audio and video respiratory protocols, work with an extered, where hearing and visual areas are focused on external simulations, reducing pain processing in the brain. The researchers noted that VR-based methods might be easier and more easily approached for beginners, while traditional attention breathing requires a focus and attention level that many people might do.