Nature provides a wide range of mental and physical health benefits, including low blood pressure and lower depression and anxiety scores. A team of neuroscientists from the University of Vienna published a study with brain scan evidence demonstrating that exposure to nature can reduce pain.

Linking Nature and Pain Reduction

Many studies link nature and exposure to pain, but they have faced methodological limitations. “Most previous evidence is based on self-reported measures of pain,” said Max Steininger, a doctoral student at the University of Vienna and lead author of the study.

“Although such measures are important, they are also associated with several drawbacks,” he continued. “For instance, self-reported pain is influenced by many different factors that are not specifically related to pain.”

“Whether or not a person tells you something is painful depends on the actual sensory signal the person receives from the body (in the context of pain, this is called nociception), on emotional aspects (fear, anxiety, and anger), cognition or memory,” he added.

Forty-nine participants (25 male and 24 female) permitted their brain activity to be measured using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) while they were subjected to electric shocks that elicited acute, transient pain. Researchers administered the shocks while the participants were exposed to blocks of virtual environments, including indoor, urban, and nature scenes.

Pain Reduction in Nature

While exposed to the virtual environments, participants reported feeling less pain in the nature environment than in the other two. Steininger and his team measured different types of signals in participants’ brains. The first measured how intense the pain was and where it was. “We found that this signal was reduced while watching nature scenes,” he said.

Another brain signal measured the emotional and cognitive qualities of the painful experiences. However, it was not affected by a natural environment.

“Our findings suggest that the pain-relieving effect of nature is genuine, although the effect we found was significantly less than that of painkillers,” Steininger said. “People in pain should certainly continue taking any medication they have been prescribed. But we hope, in the future, alternative ways of relieving pain, such as experiencing nature, may be used to help improve pain management.”