Looking at Nature Eases Physical Pain – Here’s Why

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.

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.

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.

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.”

“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.

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.”

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.