An Overview of the Body Schema and Body Image: Theoretical Models, Methodological Settings and Pitfalls for Rehabilitation of Persons with Neurological Disorders

An Overview of the Bodily Awareness Representation and Interoception: Insights and Progress in the Field of Neurorehabilitation Research

In the last two decades, the scientific literature on so-called body representations has been increasing, and the notion of body awareness (BA) is particularly interesting for neurorehabilitation. In this article, we present results derived from recent studies on this representation, considering the different definitions and explicative models proposed as well as the empirical settings used to test it, providing an extensive overview of these issues. This article discusses the challenge of understanding how we integrate the sensory experiences of proprioception (knowing where our body is in space) and interoception (sensing internal bodily sensations, like hunger of thirst) with our perception of self. This is a difficult problem to analyze because our awareness of our body is inherently linked to our perspective, since the body is the means through which we interact with the world. Presenting the different viewpoints offered by recent theories on this concern, we highlighted that the neurorehabilitation and psychiatric settings offer two important fields useful for the study of BA because in them it is possible to analyze bodily representations by inducing/observing a controlled discrepancy between dysfunctional content and sensory inputs.

Being in Virtual Reality and Its Influence on Brain Health-An Overview of Benefits, Limitations and Prospects

BACKGROUND

Dynamic technological development and its enormous impact on modern societies are posing new challenges for 21st-century neuroscience. A special place is occupied by technologies based on virtual reality (VR). VR tools have already played a significant role in both basic and clinical neuroscience due to their high accuracy, sensitivity and specificity and, above all, high ecological value.

OBJECTIVE

Being in a digital world affects the functioning of the body as a whole and its individual systems. The data obtained so far, both from experimental and modeling studies, as well as (clinical) observations, indicate their great and promising potential, but apart from the benefits, there are also losses and negative consequences for users.

METHODS

This review was conducted according to the PRISMA (Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses) framework across electronic databases (such as Web of Science Core Collection; PubMed; and Scopus, Taylor & Francis Online and Wiley Online Library) to identify beneficial effects and applications, as well as adverse impacts, especially on brain health in human neuroscience.

RESULTS

More than half of these articles were published within the last five years and represent state-of-the-art approaches and results (e.g., 54.7% in Web of Sciences and 63.4% in PubMed), with review papers accounting for approximately 16%. The results show that in addition to proposed novel devices and systems, various methods or procedures for testing, validation and standardization are presented (about 1% of articles). Also included are virtual developers and experts, (bio)(neuro)informatics specialists, neuroscientists and medical professionals.

CONCLUSIONS

VR environments allow for expanding the field of research on perception and cognitive and motor imagery, both in healthy and patient populations. In this context, research on neuroplasticity phenomena, including mirror neuron networks and the effects of applied virtual (mirror) tasks and training, is of interest in virtual prevention and neurogeriatrics, especially in neurotherapy and neurorehabilitation in basic/clinical and digital neuroscience.