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Researchers hope their work could open the door to wearable systems that could automatically adapt chronic pain treatment in real time.
Combining artificial intelligence (AI) with eye tracking in virtual reality could help to personalise drug-free treatment for millions of people living with chronic pain, according to world-first research from the University of East Anglia (UEA).
The study involved 84 participants including 42 people with chronic musculoskeletal pain conditions such as arthritis and fibromyalgia. Participants completed a series of increasingly demanding memory challenges while wearing a virtual reality (VR) headset equipped with eye-tracking technology.
“Chronic pain affects an estimated 1.5 billion people worldwide and is one of the leading causes of disability,” said Jordan Tsigarides, lead researcher and senior clinical research fellow at UEA’s School of Health Sciences. “Virtual reality (VR) has enormous therapeutic potential, whether that’s guiding patients through a peaceful woodland, supporting relaxation exercises or engaging them with games and puzzles that help manage pain.”
Reduced pain-related stress and anxiety
It can help reduce chronic pain by immersing users in engaging, interactive environments that capture the brain’s attention and draw it away from pain, reduce pain-related stress and anxiety, and may even help retrain how the brain processes pain over time, he added. “But most virtual reality programmes offer the same experience to everyone, even though people’s pain and mental effort can fluctuate from moment to moment. Our work suggests that future systems could read mental effort through the eyes and adapt therapy in real-time to each individual.”
As part of the study, researchers found that as tasks became more mentally challenging, participants’ pupil size widened and their blinking rates increased. When the AI models used in the study analysed patterns in these signals over time, they were able to distinguish between low and high levels of mental workload with up to 88% accuracy in healthy volunteers. But their accuracy was significantly lower among participants living with chronic pain.
Potential to treat anxiety and depression
If a VR headset can detect when a user is becoming mentally overloaded, it could potentially adapt the experience automatically to help keep them engaged and to maximise therapeutic benefit, said Tsigarides. But larger studies are needed to determine whether adaptive VR therapies can improve real-world outcomes for patients.
“Our earlier research showed promising pain reductions in people with fibromyalgia using therapeutic VR,” Tsigarides added, “and these results suggest a future in which a headset could continuously monitor the brain’s workload through the eyes, automatically fine-tuning treatment to each individual user.”
He added: “Our findings could help make treatments more personalised and responsive. This could enhance future VR treatments, not just for pain, but potentially for conditions like anxiety or depression.”
