Nature’s Painkiller: How Virtual Scenes Ease Pain in the Brain – Neuroscience News

Summary: Viewing natural scenes can significantly reduce how people perceive pain, a new neuroimaging study has found. Researchers discovered that participants reported less pain and exhibited altered brain activity associated with pain perception while looking at virtual nature, compared to urban or office environments.

Using advanced machine learning to analyze brain scans, scientists confirmed this pain-relieving effect was due to reduced activity in areas responsible for processing sensory pain signals, and not merely a placebo effect. The findings suggest that virtual experiences of nature could serve as accessible, non-invasive treatments to complement conventional pain management.

Key Facts:

• Reduced Pain Perception: Watching virtual nature scenes reduced both reported pain and brain activity related to pain processing.
• Brain Evidence: Advanced brain scans showed that sensory pain signals in the brain were significantly reduced when participants viewed natural scenes.
• Accessible Treatment Potential: The effect observed could lead to effective, non-drug approaches to pain management accessible anywhere through virtual technology.

Source: University of Exeter

A new neuroimaging study has revealed that viewing nature can help ease how people experience pain, by reducing the brain activity linked to pain perception.

Published in the journal Nature Communications and led by a team from the University of Vienna and University of Exeter, the research offers a promising foundation for new types of non-pharmacological pain treatments.

Using an fMRI scanner, researchers monitored the brain activity of 49 participants in Austria, as they received pain delivered through a series of small electric shocks.

When they were watching videos of a natural scene compared to a city or an indoor office, participants not only reported feeling less pain, but scans showed the specific brain responses associated with processing pain changed too.

The study used advanced machine-learning to analyse the brain networks related to pain processing. The team discovered that the raw sensory signals the brain receives when something hurts were reduced when watching a carefully designed, high quality, virtual  nature scene.

The study confirmed previous findings that suggest nature can reduce subjective reports of pain, and also marks the first clear demonstration of how natural environments influence the brain, helping to buffer against unpleasant experiences.

University of Vienna PhD student Max Steininger, lead author of the study, explained:  “Numerous studies have shown that people consistently report feeling less pain when exposed to nature.

“Yet until now, the underlying reasons for this effect were unclear. 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.

“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.”

The paper also helps shed light on a longstanding mystery of the healing potential of natural settings.

Over forty years ago, a seminal study from pioneering American researcher, Roger Ulrich, showed how hospital patients used fewer painkillers and recovered faster when their windows overlooked a green space instead of a brick wall. Yet following decades of research, the mechanisms underlying this effect remained unknown.

The new findings provide the first robust explanation of why Ulrich’s patients might have experienced less pain, and demonstrate how virtual nature encounters could bring these benefits to anyone, anywhere – providing a non-invasive, accessible pathway to pain management.

Dr Alex Smalley, a coauthor from the University of Exeter concluded “This study highlights how virtual encounters can bring the healing potential of nature to people when they can’t get outside.

“But we hope our results also serve as renewed evidence for the importance of protecting healthy and functioning natural environments, encouraging people to spend time in nature for the benefit of both the planet and people.”

“The fact that this pain-relieving effect can be achieved through a virtual nature exposure which is easy to administer has important practical implications for non drug treatments, and opens new avenues for research to better understand how nature impacts our minds.”

About this pain and neuroscience research news

Author: Louise Vennells
Source: University of Exeter
Contact: Louise Vennells – University of Exeter
Image: The image is credited to Neuroscience News

Original Research: Open access.
“Nature exposure induces analgesic effects by acting on nociception-related neural processing” by Max Steininger et al. Nature Communications

Abstract

Nature exposure induces analgesic effects by acting on nociception-related neural processing

Nature exposure has numerous health benefits and might reduce self-reported acute pain.

Given the multi-faceted and subjective quality of pain and methodological limitations of prior research, it is unclear whether the evidence indicates genuine analgesic effects or results from domain-general effects and subjective reporting biases.

This preregistered neuroimaging study investigates how nature modulates nociception-related and domain-general brain responses to acute pain.

Healthy participants (N = 49) receiving electrical shocks report lower pain when exposed to virtual nature compared to matched urban or indoor control settings.

Multi-voxel signatures of pain-related brain activation patterns demonstrate that this subjective analgesic effect is associated with reductions in nociception-related rather than domain-general cognitive-emotional neural pain processing.

Preregistered region-of-interest analyses corroborate these results, highlighting reduced activation of areas connected to somatosensory aspects of pain processing (thalamus, secondary somatosensory cortex, and posterior insula).

These findings demonstrate that virtual nature exposure enables genuine analgesic effects through changes in nociceptive and somatosensory processing, advancing our understanding of how nature may be used to complement non-pharmacological pain treatment.

That this analgesic effect can be achieved with easy-to-administer virtual nature exposure has important practical implications and opens novel avenues for research on the precise mechanisms by which nature impacts our mind and brain.