Virtual environment applications in clinical neuropsychology

Virtual environment (VE) technology is increasingly being recognized as a useful medium for the study, assessment, and rehabilitation of cognitive processes and functional abilities. The capacity of VE technology to create dynamic three-dimensional (3D) stimulus environments, within which all behavioral responding can be recorded, offers clinical assessment and rehabilitation options that are not available using traditional neuropsychological methods. This work has the potential to advance the scientific study of normal cognitive and behavioral processes and to improve our capacity to understand, measure, and treat the impairments typically found in clinical populations with central nervous system (CNS) dysfunction. The paper provides a rationale for the application of VE technology in the areas of neuropsychological assessment and cognitive rehabilitation, presents a tabled summary of the VE literature targeting cognitive/functional processes in clinical CNS populations and briefly describes two of our VE applications targeting attention and visuospatial processing.