"Our study is the first to provide evidence from brain scans that this isn't just a ‘placebo’ effect – driven by people’s beliefs and expectations that nature is good for them – instead, the brain is reacting less to information about where the pain is coming from and how intense it feels," said lead author of the study, Max Steininger, a PhD student at the University of Vienna, Austria, in a press release.
Previous studies suggest that people who live in greener neighborhoods tend to react less strongly to stressors and have better long-term mental health. Even short experimental exposure to nature has been found to have a positive effect on subjective and neural indicators of well-being.
Research further indicates that natural settings may reduce self-reported acute pain. Most previous studies, however, have relied on self-report measures of pain, making it challenging to account for the multi-faceted nature of pain ranging from pain perception to affective, cognitive, and motivational processes.
In the current study, researchers sought to overcome previous research limitations by assessing individuals' brain activity with fMRI. To do so, they recruited 49 healthy participants in Austria who were monitored via fMRI while receiving pain delivered through a series of small electric shocks and watching videos of natural, urban, or indoor scenes.
Participants ultimately reported feeling less pain while watching videos of a natural scene. Analysis of the participant’s brain activity revealed that watching natural scenes was linked to reduced raw sensory signaling to the brain in response to the pain stimulus.
“Our findings suggest that the pain-relieving effect of nature is genuine, although the effect we found was around half that of painkillers. People in pain should certainly continue taking any medication they have been prescribed. But we hope in future alternative ways of relieving pain, such as experiencing nature, may be used to help improve pain management,” said Steininger.
Sources: EurekAlert, Nature Communications
