Observing nature can help us feel less pain. Now, for the first time, brain scans confirm what we subjectively feel, and point to why our perception of pain might change. Surprisingly, even virtual nature distracts our attention away from processing pain at a basic neurophysiological level. The researchers hope that this will also draw attention to how important nature is for our health and why we should protect it.
By Hanna Gabriel
🛈 In a Nutshell
- A recent neuroimaging study shows that virtual nature experience reduces pain-related brain activity.
- The results indicate that nature can divert attention from pain at a basal level of pain-related processing.
- The study combined environmental psychology and neuroscience. For the first time, pain processing in different virtual environments was compared using fMRI.
- The findings open up possibilities for non-pharmaceutical pain treatment and show that preserving access to nature experiences could have therapeutic value for our health.
We know that a walk in the woods feels good. Greener neighbourhoods make us more resilient to stress, and listening to birdsong can even reduce anxiety or paranoia. But can nature change the way we experience basic bodily experiences such as pain? Yes, it reduces the response to the physical trigger and the intensity of the pain, as recently shown in a study by the University of Vienna in Nature Communications.
Even with animated nature scenes
In an unprecedented approach, the researchers used neuroimaging to map pain processing in the brain while participants viewed animated nature scenes. Nature, but not urban or indoor environments, significantly reduced pain-specific processing brain signatures and perceived ratings of pain. Surprisingly, the effect was most likely due to the unique way nature captures our attention, rather than mood or stress reduction. Even if it’s only virtual. This could offer non-pharmacological treatments for pain, for example for people in hospital who are immobile. And it underlines the value of nature for our health.
In the study, participants underwent functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) They received mild but painful electric shocks, while watching specifically designed animations of nature scenes, pleasant urban areas or an indoor environment. The results suggest three things: First, it is not just a subjective feeling that nature makes you feel better, but a neurophysiological process. Second, nature alters the perception of pain, as demonstrated by precise brain measurements. And third, even digital nature scenes can have this effect.
What we knew and what’s new
The idea that nature reduces pain has been around for a while. But for decades, scientists have wondered whether it was a placebo effect caused by positive associations with nature. “The most famous study on the subject was published in Science more than 40 years ago,” says health and environmental psychologist Mathew White, one of the authors of the study. White is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Clinical and Health Psychology at the University of Vienna and a member of its Environment and Climate Research Hub (ECH).
In the landmark study from the 1980s, researchers found that people recovering from surgery needed less pain medication if their window faced trees rather than a brick wall. To investigate the neural basis of this effect, White teamed up with neuropsychologist Claus Lamm, Professor at the Faculty of Psychology at the University of Vienna and also member of the ECH, and Maximilian Steininger, a doctoral student in environmental neuroscience in Lamm’s research group.
New insights from the brain scanner
The brain’s wiring for pain is complex. Let’s say you stub your toe on a bedpost. Processing this information involves several components: some at a basic (called nociceptive) level – telling you how hard you hit your toe and which one. And some at an associative, emotional level – reminding you that you’ve broken this toe before and had to limp painfully for over a week, which only makes the pain feel worse. Together they make up the perception of pain.
This is important, because environmental psychology offers two explanations for why nature might dampen pain: Attention Restoration Theory suggests that nature attracts our attention in a way that restores mental capacity and diverts it away from pain (on the more basic, nociceptive level of processing). Stress Recovery Theory says that nature triggers positive emotions that reduce stress and improve well-being (on a higher, more emotional level of processing).
Using fMRI data, the researchers were able to measure for the first time that the effect of nature is due to changes in lower-level pain processing, suggesting that attention is key.
“Attention directs the focus of my perception to a certain aspect, as if illuminated by the light of a torch. Our hypothesis is that during the experience of nature, this is blocked or reduced,” explains neuropsychologist Lamm. The finding that this specific mechanism is responsible came as a surprise even to them, all three scientists agree.
While they only tested virtual environments (you can’t go for a walk in the woods in a brain scanner), the effects could be even more pronounced in real nature, first-author Steininger adds: “In a real environment, there’s even more potential to create a distraction effect. You can not only see or hear your surroundings, but also feel the wind in your face or the sun on your skin.”
Signatures of the brain
The combination of neuroscience expertise and environmental psychology within this study provided an unparalleled insight into the brain. The researchers used brain scans, physiological parameters such as heart rate, and participants’ self-assessments – all of which showed that pain sensitivity was reduced by nature scenes.
To dig deeper into the brain’s networks, Steininger and Lamm analysed the scan data for activity in specific regions as well as signature patterns. Developed using machine learning, such patterns are indicators of either the basal-nociceptive (stub your toe) or emotional-cognitive processing part (memory and emotions). Knowing which brain regions are involved at which level of processing, the scientists were able to put the pieces together: Looking at nature reduces pain processing at a basal, nociceptive level – regardless of any positive associations one might have with it.
“This finding is particularly important in terms of therapeutic implications,” says Lamm. “Otherwise, one could argue that nature doesn’t specifically affect pain, but rather general processes of how people deal with unpleasant stimuli.” While the research was conducted in acute pain, the next step should be to extend it to chronic pain patients, adds Steininger, as one in five adults worldwide suffers from chronic pain. However, he stresses that these results should not give pain patients the idea to stop taking their pain medication, but to use the experience of nature as a complementary approach.
Pain relief under strict control
One reason why this study stands out from previous attempts is that it is a collaboration between different fields of neuroscientific and psychological research, offering a tightly controlled design. For one thing, imaging data is a valuable addition to the self-reports traditionally used in pain assessment. For another, the researchers added an indoor environment as a control to find out whether the effect was genuinely associated with nature, or the urban environment just made the pain worse. “Also, in previous studies, nature was often compared with an urban environment that was presented in a very stressful way,” says Steininger. Naturally, a traffic jam is more stressful than a quiet place in the city and therefore not a valid control. Here, White and his collaborators provided control sceneries well-tested in previous research.
The images were specifically designed to avoid confounding factors. “Our virtual environment had an identical backdrop in both the natural and urban setting – with a lake, a view of the sky and a foreground of trees. Only for the urban environment did we add buildings, benches and a wall around the lake,” says the environmental psychologist White. “At first, the neuroscience team was concerned that the environments were too similar to see any effects in a brain scan. But our results with these images from over 2,000 people showed that they rated the environments very differently. It was the neuroscientist’s trust in our data that made them take the risk.”
Creating impact – also for climate change research
The findings open up easy-access therapy options for medicine, and White and colleagues have studied this in dental practices, where patients who interacted with virtual nature found the procedure less painful. But these are also important findings when it comes to climate change, the researchers agree, because specifying nature’s effects on our brain can be an important aid in understanding the effects of climate change on humans. In 2023, Lamm and colleagues published a paper on how to leverage neuroscience for climate change research, “a call to action for neuroscientists to join broader scientific efforts to tackle the existential environmental threats Earth is currently facing.” Such networks (of which the ECH is a good example), are what bring researchers together on climate-related research.
“With climate change comes degradation of natural spaces, be it through forest fires, desertification, loss of biodiversity or related aspects such as pollution. The natural environment will become less pleasant for humans and therefore provide fewer opportunities to reduce the effects of pain,” says White. “We need to maintain high-quality environments for people’s physical health, but also for their mental health.” Because let’s face it: Nothing beats that relaxing walk in the woods – and your brain knows it before you do.
About the researchers:
Claus Lamm is Professor of Biological Psychology at the University of Vienna, where he heads the Social, Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience (SCAN) Unit. His research focuses on the neural mechanisms of empathy and prosocial behaviour, using interdisciplinary approaches combining neuroimaging, psychopharmacology and comparative studies. He is currently developing his main research focus on the impact of the environment on humans and vice versa. Lamm is Vice Dean for Research and Advancement of ECRs at the Faculty of Psychology and a member of the Environment and Climate Research Hub (ECH) of the University of Vienna.
Maximilian Steininger is a PhD candidate at the Social, Cognitive, and Affective Neuroscience Unit (SCAN) in the Department of Cognition, Emotion, and Methods in Psychology at the University of Vienna. He specializes in environmental neuroscience, an interdisciplinary field that uses neuroscientific methods to explore how our environment influences the brain and mind. His research primarily focuses on how exposure to nature affects the processing of aversive experiences, such as pain or stress.
Mathew White is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Clinical and Health Psychology at the University of Vienna and a health and environmental psychologist specialising in ecological public health. His research investigates how natural environments influence mental health, well-being and health-related behaviours. He has led and contributed to major international projects on aquatic environments and public health, and has been one of the world’s most highly cited researchers four years in a row. Currently, White is leading the EU Horizon Europe RESONATE project on nature-based therapies that foster resilience. At the University of Vienna, he plays a key role in linking research between fields of Health and Environmental Psychology, and contributes to interdisciplinary exchange as a member of the ECH.
