This just blew me away

Spotted on Dusan Writer, a virtual world called Snow World is being used to treat burns victims. Hosted at the University of Washington (Seattle), this is "immersive virtual reality pain distraction."

SnowWorld is what it says, a virtual reality game where you are immersed by snow and can throw snowballs. The idea, according to the project website, is as follows:

"SnowWorld was specifically designed to help burn patients. Patients often report re-living their original burn experience during wound care, SnowWorld was designed to help put out the fire.

"Our logic for why VR will reduce pain is as follows. Pain perception has a strong psychological component. The same incoming pain signal can be interpreted as painful or not, depending on what the patient is thinking. Pain requires conscious attention.

"The essence of VR is the illusion users have of going inside the computer-generated environment. Being drawn into another world drains a lot of attentional resources, leaving less attention available to process pain signals. "

The above video, featuring a burns victim from the war in Afghanistan, explains a lot.

Update (21 Nov): Ben Kunz builds on this story at Thought Gadgets by talking about what the theory behind Snow World means for advertisers:

"The intriguing aspect for communication professionals is that brains can only handle so many data inputs. Just as a burn victim processing a video game where he hurls cool snowballs at penguins forgets about his real agony, consumers taking in one form of communication may not register other messages.

"It's not a stretch to be reminded of the failure of advertising models in social media sites, such as Twitter or Facebook -- where users are too busy creating content to peer at banner ads on the side."

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