Real, rubber or virtual: The vision of “one’s own” body as a means for pain modulation. A narrative review

In the last few years a branch of pain research has been focussing on the modulatory effects of the vision of the body on pain perception. So, for instance, the vision of one’s own real body has been proven to induce analgesic effects. On the other hand, bodily illusions such as the rubber hand illusion have provided new tools for the study of perceptual processes during altered body ownership states. Recently, new paradigms of body ownership made use of a technology that is going places both in clinical and in experimental settings, i.e. virtual reality. While the vision of one’s own real body has been proven to yield compelling analgesic effects, slightly more controversial are those attributed to the vision of “owned” dummy bodies. This review will discuss the studies that examined the effects on pain perception of the vision of the own body, with or without body ownership illusions.