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Despite advances in our understanding of the behavioral and molecular factors that underlie the onset and maintenance of Eating Disorders (EDs), it is still necessary to optimize treatment strategies and establish their efficacy. In this context, over the past 25 years, Virtual Reality (VR) has provided creative treatments for a variety of ED symptoms, including body dissatisfaction, craving, and negative emotions. Recently, different researchers suggested that EDs may reflect a broader impairment in multisensory body integration, and a particular VR technique—VR body swapping—has been used to repair it, but with limited clinical results. In this paper, we use the results of a systematic review employing PRISMA guidelines that explore inner body perception in EDs (21 studies included), with the ultimate goal to analyze the features of multisensory impairment associated with this clinical condition and provide possible solutions. Deficits in interoception, proprioception, and vestibular signals were observed across Anorexia and Bulimia Nervosa, suggesting that: (a) alteration of inner body perception might be a crucial feature of EDs, even if further research is needed and; (b) VR, to be effective with these patients, has to simulate/modify both the external and the internal body. Following this outcome, we introduce a new therapeutic approach—Regenerative Virtual Therapy—that integrates VR with different technologies and clinical strategies to regenerate a faulty bodily experience by stimulating the multisensory brain mechanisms and promoting self-regenerative processes within the brain itself.

Emotions and stress experienced in the academic environment are known to be related to important outcomes such as health and well-being together with other comorbidities such as decreased academic performance, increased college dropouts, and increase of problematic online and offline behaviors. Today, the situation appears even more critical in relation to the COVID-19 pandemic. Drawing on positive technology framework, this study aims to promote well-being in university students who are facing the challenging period of graduation by increasing their ability to emotionally regulate. Emotion regulation is defined as the initiation, maintenance, and modification of the occurrence, intensity, and duration of feeling states. Forty-two university students voluntarily participated in a self-administered modular intervention of 6 sessions spread over three weeks that involves virtual scenarios (used in 2D). Students were randomly allocated to an experimental group and to a waiting list group that started the intervention after 3 weeks. The virtual scenarios consisted of narrative metaphors aimed at encouraging students to be aware of their emotions, and positive resources to cope with difficult situations and develop strategies to regulate their affective states. Before and after the six sessions, participants completed an assessment by filling in online questionnaires. The results showed a significant increase both in emotional well-being and psychological well-being in the experimental group compared to the waiting list group.

The aim of this study is to investigate the effectiveness of a novel self‐administered at-home daily virtual reality (VR)‐based intervention (COVID Feel Good) for reducing the psychological burden experienced during the COVID‐19 lockdown in Italy. A total of 40 individuals who had experienced at least two months of strict social distancing measures followed COVID Feel Good between June and July 2020 for one week. Primary outcome measures were depression, anxiety, and stress symptoms, perceived stress levels, and hopelessness. Secondary outcomes were the experienced social connectedness and the level of fear experienced during the COVID‐19 pandemic. Linear mixed‐effects models were fitted to evaluate the effectiveness of the intervention. Additionally, we also performed a clinical change analysis on primary outcome measures. As concerning primary outcome measures, participants exhibited improvements from baseline to post-intervention for depression levels, stress levels, general distress, and perceived stress (all ps < 0.05) but not for the perceived hopelessness (p = 0.110). Results for the secondary outcomes indicated an increase in social connectedness from T0 to T1 (p = 0.033) but not a significant reduction in the perceived fear of coronavirus (p = 0.412). Among these study variables, these significant improvements were maintained from post‐intervention to the 2‐week follow‐up (p >0.05). Results indicated that the intervention was associated with good clinical outcomes, low‐to‐no risks for the treatment, and no adverse effects or risks. Globally, evidence suggests a beneficial effect of the proposed protocol and its current availability in 12 different languages makes COVID Feel Good a free choice for helping individuals worldwide to cope with the psychological distress associated with the COVID‐19 crisis, although large scale trials are needed to evaluate its efficacy.

In the past years, the field of collaborative robots has been developing fast, with applications ranging from health care to search and rescue, construction, entertainment, sports, and many others. However, current social robotics is still far from the general abilities we expect in a robot collaborator. This limitation is more evident when robots are faced with real-life contexts and activities occurring over long periods. In this article, we argue that human-robot collaboration is more than just being able to work side by side on complementary tasks: collaboration is a complex relational process that entails mutual understanding and reciprocal adaptation. Drawing on this assumption, we propose to shift the focus from "human-robot interaction"to "human-robot shared experience."We hold that for enabling the emergence of such shared experiential space between humans and robots, constructs such as coadaptation, intersubjectivity, individual differences, and identity should become the central focus of modeling. Finally, we suggest that this shift in perspective would imply changing current mainstream design approaches, which are mainly focused on functional aspects of the human-robot interaction, to the development of architectural frameworks that integrate the enabling dimensions of social cognition.

The investigation of emerging adults' expectations of development of the next generation of robots is a fundamental challenge to narrow the gap between expectations and real technological advances, which can potentially impact the effectiveness of future interactions between humans and robots. Furthermore, the literature highlights the important role played by negative attitudes toward robots in setting people's expectations. To better explore these expectations, we administered the Scale for Robotic Needs and performed a latent profile analysis to describe different expectation profiles about the development of future robots. The profiles identified through this methodology can be placed along a continuum of robots' humanization: from a group that desires mainly the technical features to a group that imagines a humanized robot in the future. Finally, the analysis of emerging adults' knowledge about robots and their negative attitudes toward robots allowed us to understand how these affect their expectations.

Over the last 20 years, virtual reality (VR) has been widely used to promote mental health in populations presenting different clinical conditions. Mental health does not refer only to the absence of psychiatric disorders but to the absence of a wide range of clinical conditions that influence people’s general and social well-being such as chronic pain, neurological disorders that lead to motor o perceptual impairments, psychological disorders that alter behaviour and social cognition, or physical conditions like eating disorders or present in amputees. It is known that an accurate perception of oneself and of the surrounding environment are both key elements to enjoy mental health and well-being, and that both can be distorted in patients suffering from the clinical conditions mentioned above. In the past few years, multiple studies have shown the effectiveness of VR to modulate such perceptual distortions of oneself and of the surrounding environment through virtual body ownership illusions. This narrative review aims to review clinical studies that have explored the manipulation of embodied virtual bodies in VR for improving mental health, and to discuss the current state of the art and the challenges for future research in the context of clinical care.

Background: Living in the time of the COVID-19 means experiencing not only a global health emergency but also extreme psychological stress with potential emotional side effects such as sadness, grief, irritability, and mood swings. Crucially, lockdown and confinement measures isolate people who become the first and the only ones in charge of their own mental health: people are left alone facing a novel and potentially lethal situation, and, at the same time, they need to develop adaptive strategies to face it, at home. In this view, easy-to-use, inexpensive, and scientifically validated self-help solutions aiming to reduce the psychological burden of coronavirus are extremely necessary. Aims: This pragmatic trial aims to provide the evidence that a weekly self-help virtual reality (VR) protocol can help overcome the psychological burden of the Coronavirus by relieving anxiety, improving well-being, and reinforcing social connectedness. The protocol will be based on the “Secret Garden” 360 VR video online (www.covidfeelgood.com) which simulates a natural environment aiming to promote relaxation and self-reflection. Three hundred sixty–degree or spherical videos allow the user to control the viewing direction. In this way, the user can explore the content from any angle like a panorama and experience presence and immersion. The “Secret Garden” video is combined with daily exercises that are designed to be experienced with another person (not necessarily physically together), to facilitate a process of critical examination and eventual revision of core assumptions and beliefs related to personal identity, relationships, and goals. Methods: This is a multicentric, pragmatic pilot randomized controlled trial involving individuals who experienced the COVID-19 pandemic and underwent a lockdown and quarantine procedures. The trial is approved by the Ethics Committee of the Istituto Auxologico Italiano. Each research group in all the countries joining the pragmatic tria

In the last few years, Instagram has been a topic of much contention, as it has been shown to be associated with both risks and benefits for young users. This study explores the influence of the use of Instagram on adolescents’ constructions of self and interpersonal experience. Forty Italian adolescents aged between 11 and 16 years were interviewed and completed repertory grids. The results showed that the adolescents’ self-construction and distance from others were mostly influenced by receiving, or not receiving, positive feedback, rather than by using Instagram itself. Specifically, there was an increase in self-acceptance and social desirability after receiving a “like” and an increase in social isolation after receiving no “likes”. The regression model also showed a decrease in self-acceptance on Instagram in the case of female adolescents, and in participants who edited photos. These findings are useful for understanding the constant need for approval adolescents require today and could be used as a guiding tool for future studies and intervention policies. The present study offers an innovative methodology that refers to the relevant dimensions of adolescents’ self-construction rather than investigating the more general relationship between personality traits and social networks’ use.

How our brain represents our body through the integration of internal and external sensory information so that we can interact with our surrounding environment has become a matter of interest especially in the field of neurorehabilitation. In this regard, there is an increasing interest in the use of multisensory integration techniques—such as the use of body ownership illusions—to modulate distorted body representations after brain damage. In particular, cross-modal illusions such as mirror visual feedback therapy (MVFT) have been widely used for motor rehabilitation. Despite the effectiveness of the MVFT for motor rehabilitation, there are some limitations to fully modify the distorted internal representation of the paretic limb in patients with stroke. A possible explanation for this relies on the physical limitations of the mirror in reproducing upper-limb distortions, which can result in a reduced sense of ownership of the mirrored limb. New digital technologies such as virtual reality (VR) and 360° videos allow researchers to create body ownership illusions by adapting virtual bodies so that they represent specific morphological characteristics including upper-limb distortions. In this manuscript, we present a new rehabilitation approach that employs full virtual body ownership illusions, using a 360° video system, for the assessment and modulation of the internal representation of the affected upper limb in stroke patients. We suggest modifying the internal representation of the upper limb to a normal position before starting motor rehabilitation training.

Our aim was to explore emotions in Instagram images marked with hashtags referring to body image–related components using an artificial intelligence–based discrete emotional analysis. A total of 500 Instagram photos marked by specific hashtags related to body image components were analyzed and specific discrete emotions expressed in each picture were detected using the Emotion application program interface API from Microsoft Azure Cognitive Service. Results showed that happiness and neutrality were the most intense and recognizable emotions expressed in all images. Happiness intensity was significantly higher in images with #bodyimage and #bodyconfidence and higher levels of neutral emotion were found in images tagged with #body, #bodyfitness, and #thininspirational. This study integrated a discrete emotional model with the conventional dimensional one, and offered a higher degree of granularity in the analysis of emotions–body link on Instagram through an artificial intelligence technology. Future research should deepen the use of discrete emotions on Instagram and the role of neutrality in body image representation.

Anorexia nervosa (AN) is a severe eating disorder affecting mostly young females and involving significant weight loss, a high fear of gaining weight and a distorted body image. Anorectic patients incur overestimations of their own body, thus suggesting that a distorted experience of body may play a crucial role in this disease. Specifically, a recent model (Riva et al., 2014) posits that a distorted body image could be due to difficulties in integrating the perception of signals from different parts of the body. Many studies evidenced that patients affected by Eating Disorders (EDs) have impairments at the visual, interoceptive, proprioceptive, and tactile level. However, it is still unexplored whether anorectic patients struggle to integrate auditory-visual signals together. In this study, we tested whether temporal discrimination processing of visuo-auditory stimuli is impaired in patients with AN using the Sound-Induced Flash Illusion (SIFI). The more we experience this illusion, the more impaired is our temporal discrimination processing. We hypothesized that ANs showed less correct responses at the task compared to healthy participants. We exposed healthy women and ANs selected from the Centro Pilota Regionale per i disturbi del comportamento alimentare (Regional Pilot Center for Eating behavioral disorders) (SR CDCA) Spedali Civili of Brescia (Spedali Civili of Brescia), to this illusion to assess the degree of impairment of visuo-auditory integration and we compared their performances in terms of accuracy. Result showed that ANs gave less correct responses than controls especially for longer Stimulus-onset asynchronies (SOAs). This study can have crucial implications for designing new treatments of EDs since it can elucidate processes underlying multisensory integration impairments, which can be specific for this population.