Multimodal Experimental Platform to Disentangle Emotional and Physiological Pain Components

OBJECTIVE: Pain is a disabling experience significantly impacting individuals' lives. The complex interplay between physiological and psychological factors poses challenges for assessing pain and developing effective therapies. Hence, healthcare providers advocate for reliable, objective, multidimensional metrics to quantify pain. Developing and validating such metrics requires standardized experimental tools capable of probing physical and emotional dimensions. METHODS: To these aims, we designed a synergistic platform combining virtual reality (VR) and electro-cutaneous stimulation (ECS). The platform targeted physical (via ECS) and emotional (flames appearing on a virtual hand) pain components. We tested it with 20 participants, each undergoing 120 painful stimuli. During stimulation, we collected neural, physiological signals, and self-reported pain. CONCLUSION: We developed a robust framework to investigate distinct pain dimensions and validated TIP for assessing individuals' subjective pain. SIGNIFICANCE: In the future, multidimensional tools and reliable metrics could foster personalized effective pain therapies.