Marta Matamala-Gomez

University of Barcelona | UB · Dept. of Health and Medical Sciences

Changes in body representation may affect pain perception. The effect of a distorted body image, such as the telescoping effect in amputee patients, on pain perception, is unclear. This study aimed to investigate whether distorting an embodied virtual arm in virtual reality (simulating the telescoping effect in amputees) modulated pain perception a...

The present chapter explores how immersive virtual reality (VR) systems can be used for pain research and treatment. Pain is a universal, yet entirely subjective and multifaceted unpleasant experience. One of the earliest VR studies on pain highlighted the role of attention in pain modulation. However, the role of body representation in pain modula...

Despite advances in our understanding of the behavioral and molecular factors that underlie the onset and maintenance of Eating Disorders (EDs), it is still necessary to optimize treatment strategies and establish their efficacy. In this context, over the past 25 years, Virtual Reality (VR) has provided creative treatments for a variety of ED sympt...

Background: given the limited efficacy, tolerability, and accessibility of pharmacological treatments for chronic migraine (CM), new complementary strategies have gained increasing attention. Body ownership illusions have been proposed as a non-pharmacological strategy for pain relief. Here, we illustrate the protocol for evaluating the efficacy i...

Neurological disorders are one of the most common causes of motor/cognitive impairments leading to adult disability. Neurorehabilitation is defined as a complex rehabilitation process directed to recovery from a nervous system injury, and to minimize or compensate the associated functional limitations. The frequent incomplete recovery of the neurol...

Recent evidence supports the use of immersive virtual reality (immersive VR) as a means of applying visual feedback techniques in neurorehabilitation. In this study, we investigated the benefits of an embodiment-based immersive VR training program for orthopedic upper limb rehabilitation, with the aim of improving the motor functional ability of th...

Aim First, we investigated whether the exposure to different visual feedback conditions may modulate pain perception by means of visual induced analgesia in patients with chronic migraine. Second, to comprehend the way emotional face expressions could induce visual analgesia, we evaluated the degree of identification with the four experimental cond...

Editorial on a special issue

The Allocentric Lock theory (ALT) suggests that anorexia (AN) may be the outcome of a primary disturbance in the way the body is “experienced” and “remembered”. A long tradition of research had proved that emotions can influence the encoding, storing and retrieving of memories. The aim of the present study was to explore the effectiveness of a new...

VR effectiveness has been tested before in Anorexia Nervosa (AN) with full-body illusion. The embodiment of patients with AN into a different virtual body to modify their long-term memory of the body is a crucial factor for the onset and maintenance of this disorder. In this pilot study, we aimed to test the usability and User Experience (UX) of th...

In catastrophic situations such as pandemics, patients' healthcare including admissions to hospitals and emergency services are challenged by the risk of infection and by limitations of healthcare resources. In such a setting, the use of telemedicine interventions has become extremely important. New technologies have proved helpful in pandemics as...

The COVID-19 poses an ongoing threat to lives around the world and challenges the existing public health and medical service delivery. The lockdown or quarantine measures adopted to prevent the spread of COVID-19 has caused the interruption in ongoing care and access to medical care including to patients with existing neurological conditions. Besid...

Chronic diseases represent one of the main causes of death worldwide. The integration of digital solutions in clinical interventions is broadly diffused today; however, evidence on their efficacy in addressing psychological comorbidities of chronic diseases is sparse. This systematic review analyzes and synthesizes the evidence about the efficacy o...

Over the last 20 years, virtual reality (VR) has been widely used to promote mental health in populations presenting different clinical conditions. Mental health does not refer only to the absence of psychiatric disorders but to the absence of a wide range of clinical conditions that influence people's general and social well-being such as chronic...

Riassunto. In situazioni catastrofiche, come l'attuale pandemia, il rischio infettivo limita l'accesso ai servizi ospedalieri ed ai dipartimenti di emergenza ed urgenza. In tali situazioni, l'utilizzo delle nuove tecnologie, quali la realtà virtuale, può facilitare l'accesso ad alcuni dei servizi del sistema sanitario tramite interventi di telemedi...

In catastrophic situations such as pandemics, patients' presence in hospitals, and emergency services becomes difficult because of the risk of being infected. At that point, the use of new technologies such as virtual reality systems can pave the way for introducing new telemedicine interventions into the health care system. New technologies have b...

How our brain represents our body through the integration of internal and external sensory information so that we can interact with our surrounding environment has become a matter of interest especially in the field of neurorehabilitation. In this regard, there is an increasing interest in the use of multisensory integration techniques—such as the...

Virtual Reality (VR) has progressively emerged as an effective tool for wellbeing and health in clinical populations. VR effectiveness has been tested before in Anorexia Nervosa (AN) with full-body illusion. It consists in the embodiment of patients with AN into a different virtual body to modify their long-term memory of the body as a crucial fact...

Body illusions (BIs) refer to altered perceptual states where the perception of the self-body significantly deviates from the configuration of the physical body, for example, in aspects like perceived size, shape, posture, location, and sense of ownership. Different established experimental paradigms allow to temporarily induce such altered percept...

Inner body perception is a multisensory type of body perception that relates primarily to interoception, proprioception, and the vestibular system. Inner body perception may be disturbed in people with eating disorders (EDs), causing distortions or mismatches between how the body is perceived and how the body physically is. Despite this, there has...

The growing understanding of the importance of involving patients with neurological diseases in their healthcare routine either for at-home management of their chronic conditions or after the hospitalization period has opened the research for new rehabilitation strategies to enhance patient engagement in neurorehabilitation. In addition, the use of...

The impact of emotion regulation interventions on wellbeing has been extensively documented in the literature, although only in recent years virtual reality (VR) technologies have been incorporated in the design of such interventions, in both clinical and non-clinical settings. A systematic search, following the Preferred Reporting Items for System...

A significant body of experimental evidence has demonstrated that it is possible to induce the illusion of ownership of a fake limb or even an entire fake body using multisensory correlations. Recently, immersive virtual reality has allowed users to experience the same sensations of ownership over a virtual body inside an immersive virtual environm...

Modifying the visual aspect of a virtual arm that is felt as one's own using immersive virtual reality (VR) modifies pain threshold in healthy subjects but does it modify pain ratings in chronic pain patients? Our aim was to investigate whether varying properties of a virtual arm co-located with the real arm modulated pain ratings in patients with...

This article aims to briefly review the different multisensory integration techniques by using visual feedback in rehabilitation that had led to the use of virtual reality as a rehabilitation tool. Today, virtual reality is taking a key role in the field of rehabilitation, especially in the field of neurorehabilitation, to treat motor, cognitive an...

Background: After discharge, most patients who have suffered a stroke remain with some limitations in their stair climbing ability. This is a critical factor in order to be independent in real-life mobility. Although there are several studies on prognostic factors for gait recovery, few of them have focused on to the recovery of stair climbing. A...

This article aims to briefly review the different multisensory integration techniques by using visual feedback in rehabilitation that had led to the use of virtual reality as a rehabilitation tool. Today, virtual reality is taking a key role in the field of rehabilitation, especially in the field of neurorehabilitation, to treat motor, cognitive an...

Introduction: A virtual arm can be felt as your own in virtual reality (Slater et al, 2008). The modification of visual aspects of the "owned" virtual arm has been shown to modify pain threshold in healthy subjects. For example, redness of the skin decreases the heat pain threshold (Martini et al, 2013), while looking at the virtual arm increases p...

Seeing one's own body has been reported to have analgesic properties. Analgesia has also been described when seeing an embodied virtual body colocated with the real one. However, there is controversy regarding whether this effect holds true when seeing an illusory-owned body part, such as during the rubber-hand illusion. A critical difference betwe...

Objectives: Seeing one’s own body has been reported to have analgesic properties (Longo et al. J Neurosci 29 (2009): 12125). However there is a controversy regarding whether seen an illusory owned body is also analgesic. Mohan et al. (PLoS One 7 (2012): e52400) showed no changes in pain perception during the rubber hand illusion. However, Martini e...