"Being There" in a virtual world: an enactive perspective on presence and its implications for neuropsychological assessment and rehabilitation

The most recent advances in neuroscience have shown that there is an increasing necessity of resuming the embodied vision of cognition and how it could produces a significant impact on research in neuropsychology. Moreover, from the enactive cognition perspective the ability of humans to acquire knowledge from environment can be conceived as the product of continuous cycles of embodied perception and action in which the mind and the world are constantly and mutually involved. This reciprocal relationship is fairly easy to understand when an agent is interacting within a not simulated complex space. It is rather more difficult to understand if the agent has a neurological disease that affects the ability to manage her everyday environment. The introduction of Human Computer Confluence approach and its possible digital scenarios (such as virtual environments) has proposed new challenges for enactive cognition research because it provides atypical patterns of interaction that, through the emergence of a sense of presence, influences cognitive representations and meaningful experiences. In this chapter the agents’ sense of presence in a virtual environment and its implications for the ability to catch appropriate affordances for action in space will be discussed. With the aim to clarify the similarities and differences between natural and HCC environments, the chapter starts from the explanation of the enactive cognition approach and will present a recent research approach on this topic in neuropsychology. At last the implications for the assessment and rehabilitation of high level cognitive functions in elderly population and neurological patients will be provided.