The final paragraph presents and discusses different clinical applications of VR in the mental health domain. It may also offer new embodied ways to assess the functioning of the brain by directly targeting the processes behind real-world behaviors. In other words, VR can offer new ways to structure, augment, and/or replace the experience of the body for clinical goals. The fourth paragraph suggests that VR is able to fool the predictive coding mechanisms that regulate the experience of the body, allowing it to make people feel “real” within a virtual environment. In this view, the VR experience tries to mimic the brain model as much as possible-the more similar the VR model is to the brain model, the more the individual feels present in the VR world-making it the perfect tool for experiential learning. As suggested by the “predictive coding” paradigm, the brain actively creates an internal model (simulation) of the body and the space around it, which it uses to make predictions about the expected sensory input and to minimize the number of prediction errors (or “surprise”). The third paragraph presents VR as an advanced form of reality simulation that has many similarities with the functioning of the brain. In particular, the second paragraph describes the different hardware and software components-input devices, output devices, and the simulated scenario (i.e., the virtual environment)-required for a VR experience, as well as the difference between immersive and non-immersive VR and the evolution of VR technologies. First, it explores the technologies behind the VR experience. This chapter examines the clinical potential of virtual reality (VR) in the assessment and treatment of mental health diseases.

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