Towards a neuropsychological basis of presence
Wijnand A. IJsselsteijn · PsycEXTRA Dataset · 2005
Presence research studies the experience of being in a place or being with someone as it is mediated through technology.The experience of presence appears to be a complex perception, formed through an interplay of raw multisensory data, spatial perception, attention, cognition, and motor action, all coupled through a constant dynamic loop of sensorimotor correspondence.The fact that technology can start working as a transparent extension of our own bodies is critically dependent on (i) intuitive interaction devices which are 'invisible-in-use', seamlessly matched to our sensorimotor abilities, and (ii) the highly plastic nature of our brain, which is continuously able and prone to adapt to altered sensorimotor contingencies.The perception of ourselves as part of an environment, virtual or real, critically depends on the ability to actively explore the environment, allowing the perceptual systems to construct a spatial map based on sensorimotor dependencies.Provided the real-time, reliable correlations between motor actions and multisensory inputs remain intact, the integration of telepresence technologies into our ongoing perceptual-motor loop can be usefully understood as a change in body image perception -a phenomenal extension of the self.