Introduction: Over recent decades many researchers and clinicians have started to use Virtual Reality (VR) as a new technology for implementing innovative rehabilitation treatments in cognitive and motor domains. However, the expression ‘VR’ has often also been improperly used to refer to video games. Further, VR efficacy, often confused with that of video-game exercises, is still debated. Areas covered: In this review, we provide the scientific rationale for the advantages of using VR systems in rehabilitation and investigate whether the VR could really be a promising technique for the future of rehabilitation of patients, or if it is just an entertainment for scientists. In addition, we describe some of the most used devices in VR with their potential advantages for research and provide an overview of the recent evidence and meta-analyses in rehabilitation. Expert commentary: We highlight the efficacy and fallacies of VR in neurorehabilitation and discuss the important factors emerging from the use of VR, including the sense of presence and the embodiment over a virtual avatar, in developing future applications in cognitive and motor rehabilitation.

Brain monitoring of errors in one's own and other's actions is crucial for a variety of processes, ranging from the fine-tuning of motor skill learning to important social functions, such as reading out and anticipating the intentions of others. Here, we combined immersive virtual reality and EEG recording to explore whether embodying the errors of an avatar by seeing it from a first-person perspective may activate the error monitoring system in the brain of an onlooker. We asked healthy participants to observe, from a first- or third-person perspective, an avatar performing a correct or an incorrect reach-to-grasp movement toward one of two virtual mugs placed on a table. At the end of each trial, participants reported verbally how much they embodied the avatar's arm. Ratings were maximal in first-person perspective, indicating that immersive virtual reality can be a powerful tool to induce embodiment of an artificial agent, even through mere visual perception and in the absence of any cross-modal boosting. Observation of erroneous grasping from a first-person perspective enhanced error-related negativity and medial–frontal theta power in the trials where human onlookers embodied the virtual character, hinting at the tight link between early, automatic coding of error detection and sense of embodiment. Error positivity was similar in 1PP and 3PP, suggesting that conscious coding of errors is similar for self and other. Thus, embodiment plays an important role in activating specific components of the action monitoring system when others' errors are coded as if they are one's own errors.SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENTDetecting errors in other's actions is crucial for social functions, such as reading out and anticipating the intentions of others. Using immersive virtual reality and EEG recording, we explored how the brain of an onlooker reacted to the errors of an avatar seen from a first-person perspective. We found that mere observation of erroneous actions enhances electrocortical markers of error detection in the trials where human onlookers embodied the virtual character. Thus, the cerebral system for action monitoring is maximally activated when others' errors are coded as if they are one's own errors. The results have important implications for understanding how the brain can control the external world and thus creating new brain–computer interfaces.

Over the last few years, the efforts to reveal through neuroscientific lens the relations between the mind, body, and built environment have set a promising direction of using neuroscience for architecture. However, little has been achieved thus far in developing a systematic account that could be employed for interpreting current results and providing a consistent framework for subsequent scientific experimentation. In this context, the enactive perspective is proposed as a guide to studying architectural experience for two key reasons. Firstly, the enactive approach is specifically selected for its capacity to account for the profound connectedness of the organism and the world in an active and dynamic relationship, which is primarily shaped by the features of the body. Thus, particular emphasis is placed on the issues of embodiment and motivational factors as underlying constituents of the body-architecture interactions. Moreover, enactive understanding of the relational coupling between body schema and affordances of architectural spaces singles out the two-way bodily communication between architecture and its inhabitants, which can be also explored in immersive virtual reality settings. Secondly, enactivism has a strong foothold in phenomenological thinking that corresponds to the existing phenomenological discourse in architectural theory and qualitative design approaches. In this way, the enactive approach acknowledges the available common ground between neuroscience and architecture and thus allows a more accurate definition of investigative goals. Accordingly, the outlined model of architectural subject in enactive terms – that is, a model of a human being as embodied, enactive, and situated agent, is proposed as a basis of neuroscientific and phenomenological interpretation of architectural experience.

Nowadays there is the hope that neuroscientific findings will contribute to the improvement of building design in order to create environments which satisfy man's demands. This can be achieved through the understanding of neurophysiological correlates of architectural perception. To this aim, the electroencephalographic (EEG) signals of 12 healthy subjects were recorded during the perception of three immersive virtual reality environments (VEs). Afterwards, participants were asked to describe their experience in terms of Familiarity, Novelty, Comfort, Pleasantness, Arousal, and Presence using a rating scale from 1 to 9. These perceptual dimensions are hypothesized to influence the pattern of cerebral spectral activity, while Presence is used to assess the realism of the virtual stimulation. Hence, the collected scores were used to analyze the Power Spectral Density (PSD) of the EEG for each behavioral dimension in the theta, alpha and mu bands by means of time-frequency analysis and topographic statistical maps. Analysis of Presence resulted in the activation of the frontal-midline theta, indicating the involvement of sensorimotor integration mechanisms when subjects expressed to feel more present in the VEs. Similar patterns also characterized the experience of familiar and comfortable VEs. In addition, pleasant VEs increased the theta power across visuomotor circuits and activated the alpha band in areas devoted to visuospatial exploration and processing of categorical spatial relations. Finally, the de-synchronization of the mu rhythm described the perception of pleasant and comfortable VEs, showing the involvement of left motor areas and embodied mechanisms for environment appreciation. Overall, these results show the possibility to measure EEG correlates of architectural perception involving the cerebral circuits of sensorimotor integration, spatial navigation, and embodiment. These observations can help testing architectural hypotheses in order to design environments matching the changing needs of humans.