Multimedia Interventions for Neurodiversity: Leveraging Insights from Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience to Build an Innovative Practice

Multimedia technologies and virtual reality offer unique possibilities to manipulate sensory, motor, interpersonal, and cognitive processes contributing to atypical developmental trajectories, thus holding an explosive potential to design innovative and engaging interventions. However, there has been little progress in developing interventions that go beyond the patient’s diagnosis or the fascination of technology and rather spring from a deep understanding of the specific neuropsychological processes to be nurtured in individuals. This perspective paper outlines how recent insights from developmental cognitive neuroscience can be leveraged to promote children’s multidimensional development and highlight future directions and challenges for innovating both research and clinical practice. Finally, we focus on some practical examples of multimedia and virtual reality activities we have designed to stimulate bodily-self experiences, which are crucial for building up a coherent sense of self and lay the foundation for interacting with the external world. Atypical bodily self is an early marker of heterogeneous neurodevelopmental conditions (such as autism spectrum disorders) and seems to be under-targeted in research and clinical approaches.