Virtual reality and pain management: current trends and future directions.

Virtual reality (VR) has been used to manage pain and distress associated with a wide variety of known painful medical procedures. In clinical settings and experimental studies, participants immersed in VR experience reduced levels of pain, general distress/unpleasantness and report a desire to use VR again during painful medical procedures. Investigators hypothesize that VR acts as a nonpharmacologic form of analgesia by exerting an array of emotional affective, emotion-based cognitive and attentional processes on the body's intricate pain modulation system.

Functional magnetic resonance imaging of binocular interactions in visual cortex in strabismus.

Purpose: To observe changes in primary visual cortical activation associated with perceptual suppression in individuals with strabismus, using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI).

Methods: In Phase 1, pilot data were collected from 1 control and 8 strabismic participants, including 5 with amblyopia. In Phase 2, results were collected from 7 participants with strabismus (2 recalled and 5 new), including 2 with amblyopia.

Vernier acuity of illusory contours defined by motion.

We present here a series of experiments exploring a special class of visual completion that is strictly tied to the perception of apparent motion. The stimuli consist of sparse random-dot arrays, in which dots remain in place. Changes of luminance or color of the dots at leading and trailing edges of an apparently moving region are integrated over space and time to produce the perception of well-defined contours, shapes, and color.

Subjective color from apparent motion.

In an effect we call color from motion (CFM), apparent motion is accompanied by subjective color spread seen in physically achromatic regions. Here we report that physical lights can cancel the subjective color seen in CFM. As measured by cancellation, the saturation of the subjective color spread increases as the luminance of the test elements increase.

Depth from subjective color and apparent motion.

We report that color and depth, as well as form, are recovered in tandem with seeing motion. The stimulus, consisting of multiple frames, was designed to keep all aspects, except color, of the binocular images identical. In still view, rivalry occurs due to the unmatched color of some corresponding image elements in the two eyes.