A healthy mind in a healthy virtual body: The future of virtual reality in health care

The increasing interest of neuroscience, cognitive science and social psychology towards the study of the body experience is providing a more comprehensive framework for the Bodily Self Consciousness (BSC), namely the experience of being in a body. In particular, it suggests that BSC is the outcome of the “body matrix” - a supramodal multi-sensory representation of the body and the space around it - which provides predictions about the expected sensory input and tries to minimize the amount of free energy (or ‘surprise’). The contents of the body matrix are modified by bottom-up prediction errors that signal mismatches between predicted and actual content of the different body representations. In this view, damage, malfunctioning, or altered feedback from and toward the body matrix might be involved in the aetiology of different clinical disturbances: from neurological disorders, such as chronic pain and neglect to psychiatric disorders, such as depression, schizophrenia, eating and weight disorders, and depersonalization/derealization disorder. In this paper we suggest that this framework provides the rationale for a new research field: “Embodied Medicine”. In Embodied Medicine advanced tools - Virtual Reality, neuro/biofeedback and different simulation/stimulation technologies – are integrated to modify the experience of being in a body with the goal of improving health and well-being.