Working in Movement

We usually see paying attention, being present, as a good thing. But that begs the question, paying attention to what? Choking and Chuck Berry talked about attention strategies in a simulated high-pressure athletic performance situation. It turned out that thinking too much about how you're doing something didn't always serve the athlete well.

Brain Pain looks at another type of situation where being too present to what's actually going on might not be the best thing. To people being treated for serious burns, the pain of treatment can rival the injury itself. One tools for redirecting attention during these times is virtual reality, specifically a cold virtual environment poetically called SnowWorld. The idea is not os much distraction as it is directing attention:

"What we're really trying to do is just to pull his attention away from what's happening in the therapy, to put his attention in the virtual world, and by virtue of that, have him experience less pain," adds Patterson.

(SnowWorld comes from the University of Washington's Human Interface Technology Lab.)

Using VR in dealing with pain has been tested and shown to have an effect, at least in research lab conditions. The lab has been able to use VR inside an fMRI machine with research subjects, and the results show lower pain related activity in the brain during a VR session than without one.

(Image by Todd Richards and Aric Bills, U.W., copyright Hunter Hoffman, U.W.)





















--