Nature Scenes Disrupt Pain Signals in the Brain

Scientists use MRI brain scans to show how watching nature videos changes the brain’s processing of pain.

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 Watching videos or scenes of untouched forests, cascading waterfalls, and tranquil beaches does more than evoke positive feelings—it can significantly alleviate pain at a neural level, reducing pain perception, a new study has found.

“Our findings suggest that the pain-relieving effect of nature is genuine, although the effect we found was significantly less than that of painkillers,” lead author Max Steininger from the University of Vienna said in a press release.

Non-Drug Treatment for Pain

The study, recently published in the journal Nature Communications and conducted by a team from the University of Vienna in Austria and the University of Exeter in the UK, used MRI scans to analyze brain networks related to pain.

Researchers monitored the brain activity of 49 participants while they received mild electric shocks. Participants who watched videos of natural scenes, rather than urban or indoor environments, reported experiencing less pain, with brain scans showing reduced pain processing.

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“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,” Steininger noted.

The team discovered that the pain signals the brain receives were diminished while participants watched high-quality virtual nature scenes.

The new study is in line with earlier findings that suggest nature can lower pain levels and marks the first clear demonstration of how natural environments influence brain activity to help buffer against unpleasant experiences.

The new findings help explain a phenomenon first observed over four decades ago by American researcher Roger Ulrich, who discovered that hospital patients with views of green spaces used fewer painkillers and recovered more quickly than those who looked at brick walls. Until now, scientists couldn’t explain why this occurred.

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According to researchers, the new findings provide the first explanation for why Ulrich’s patients might have experienced less pain and show how virtual nature encounters could offer these benefits to anyone, anywhere, creating an accessible approach to pain management.

This research also aligns with the biophilia hypothesis, which suggests that humans have an innate connection with nature and that contact with the natural world can benefit health and well-being.

“People in pain should certainly continue taking any medication they have been prescribed,” Steininger stated. “But we hope in future alternative ways of relieving pain, such as experiencing nature, may be used to help improve pain management.”

How Watching Videos Alters Pain Perception

These findings align with our understanding of how the brain processes sensory information, according to Krista Jordan, a licensed psychologist in Austin, Texas.

​“The human brain is very smart in certain ways and not smart in others,” Jordan told The Epoch Times. One of the interesting things about our brain is that it works off of representations, she noted. “All of our thoughts are actually just representations of what our senses are perceiving,” Jordan said. “If we can create a strong enough mental representation, then our brain cannot distinguish between that and the real thing.”

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If you imagine biting into a lemon and are provided a very vivid description of this, “your salivary glands will get activated as though they are actually biting the lemon in reality,” she said. “So the brain can be fooled by representations if they are strong enough.”

This is why virtual reality experiences can be so powerful. The visual and auditory stimuli can be incredibly life-like, according to Jordan, fooling the brain into responding to virtual stimuli the same way it would to real-world experiences.

Pain is a multisystem experience that involves different systems in the body, Jordan added. This includes the nervous system, with the brain analyzing sensory data and translating it into the thought “I am in pain”; the cardiopulmonary system responding with increased blood pressure and respiration; and the endocrine system releasing adrenalin and cortisol.

Our mental state is also a factor. As you increase pain, you typically have a corresponding increase in negative emotions like anxiety, depression, fear, and anger, Jordan noted. These enter the cardiopulmonary and endocrine feedback loop, which amplify pain signals, she added.

Pain Management Beyond Pills

The study highlights how “virtual encounters” can bring the healing potential of nature to people when they can’t get outside, stated Alex Smalley, co-author of the study from the University of Exeter.

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“But we hope our results also serve as renewed evidence for the importance of protecting healthy and functioning natural environments,” he continued, “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 easily administered virtual nature exposure “has important practical implications for non drug treatments, and opens new avenues for research to better understand how nature impacts our minds,” he added.

Health care professionals have long recognized the interconnection between physical and psychological factors in pain management, which is why the biopsychosocial model—a framework that considers biological, psychological, and social factors—has become the standard approach to understanding pain, Jordan said.

Given that surgical interventions pose potential risks and are largely irreversible, and opiates have proven highly addictive, integrating nature-based therapies offers a promising complement to traditional pain management strategies.

“It makes sense to harness the psychosocial aspect of the biopsychosocial aspect of pain,”  Jordan added.