Snow World: Helping Burn Victims Using Gaming and VR

A joint research team at The University of Washington developed a VR game called Snow World. By playing this game, burn victims can reduce their pain perception by 50-90 %. The study of physiological aspects of pain has a long history, though the most prominent theory that explains how pain perception works is 'the gate theory'. The Gate control theory of pain is the idea that physical pain is not a direct result of activation of pain receptor neurons, but rather its perception is modulated by interaction between different neurons. To make a long story short, pain is experienced by modulating gates that turn pain on or off.