RESONATE team member Maximilian (Max) Steininger of the University of Vienna is one of the authors of an exciting new study published in the journal Nature Communications. The paper can be accessed here.
Using an fMRI scanner, researchers from the University of Vienna and the University of Exeter 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 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.
We spoke with Max about this new research and the implications for the RESONATE project on nature-based therapy.
Was there anything in the study’s findings that surprised you and the other researchers?
What was most surprising was figuring out how nature helps relieve pain. We initially thought that the most likely explanation is the placebo effect or people’s expectations. But our neural data suggested something different. Unlike typical findings from so-called placebo research, the changes in the brain were not so much about how people emotionally felt about the pain. Instead, these changes were linked to the way the brain processed the pain early on, like sensing where it is coming from and how strong it is. It was less about their emotions or beliefs and more about changes in signals linked to the physical aspects of pain.
It is very exciting to see the results of this study. How can these findings inform the research done within RESONATE on nature-based therapy?
The findings highlight that nature can be beneficial for both our mental and physical health. Pain is just one example of how nature can make a difference. Importantly, pain is complex and influenced by many different factors. Nature seems to be another piece of the puzzle that will help people manage their pain. By including nature-based therapy into pain treatments, we can expand the ways nature can be used to improve health and well-being.
The experiment used well-designed, virtual nature. Do you think results would be different for exposure to ‘real’ nature settings, which can sometimes be more ‘messy’ and less well designed? Or should we start focusing on adding these types of images to hospital and other sites?
I believe the results might be even “better” with “real” nature. We are currently working on a systematic review of studies on this topic, and so far, it seems that more immersive nature – that engages multiples senses at once – can be even better at reducing pain. Real nature provides not just sights and sounds, like in our study, but also scents, textures, and many other sensations. There’s nothing quite like feeling the warm sun on your skin or catching the fresh smell of a forest after rain – experiences that virtual settings just can’t fully replicate. That said, it’s not always possible to bring people into “real” nature, especially in medical settings. In those cases, virtual nature can be a great alternative. Our study shows that simply looking at and listening to virtual nature can be enough to help reduce pain. It seems like a promising option for many healthcare settings.