The New Painkiller? How Seeing Nature Can Reduce Brain Pain
- Lidi Garcia
- Mar 21
- 5 min read
Being in contact with nature, even if only virtually, can reduce the perception of pain. One study showed that people who were subjected to small electric shocks reported feeling less pain when viewing images of natural scenes. In addition, brain scans indicated that nature reduced activity in areas of the brain linked to the emotional discomfort of pain. These findings suggest that exposure to nature may be an alternative to supplement pain treatments, without the need for medication.
The presence of nature around us, such as parks, forests, beaches and even isolated elements such as trees, sunsets and the sound of birds, can have significant benefits for mental health and well-being.
Studies have shown that living in neighborhoods with more green spaces can reduce stress and improve mental health in the long term. In addition, people who regularly visit nature report feeling happier and less anxious. Even brief exposure to natural environments can have positive effects on the brain and emotional state.
There are a few theories as to why nature has this positive effect. One of these is the Stress Recovery Theory (SRT), which suggests that natural environments provide a sense of safety and tranquility, helping to relieve stress.
Another important theory is Attention Restoration Theory (ART), which argues that nature helps restore our ability to focus spontaneously and effortlessly. While these theories differ, they both show that exposure to nature can benefit mental and emotional health.
A lesser-known effect of exposure to nature is reduced pain. About 40 years ago, a groundbreaking study showed that patients recovering from surgery required fewer pain medications and were discharged sooner when they had a window with a view of trees, compared to those who only saw a brick wall.
Other more recent studies have reinforced this idea by showing that people exposed to nature during painful medical procedures, such as dental work or invasive tests, reported less pain.
Despite these promising findings, some questions remain. Many previous studies have not adequately controlled for factors that could influence the results.
For example, nature is often compared to unpleasant and stressful urban settings, which can make it seem as if nature reduces pain, when in fact the urban environment may actually be making the experience worse.
In addition, most research has relied solely on people’s self-reports of their pain, which can be influenced by subjective factors and individual expectations.
To further explore this issue, scientists have begun using neuroimaging techniques (such as functional magnetic resonance imaging, or fMRI) to directly analyze brain activity during painful experiences.
When we feel pain, several areas of the brain are activated, some related to the physical perception of pain (such as intensity and location on the body) and others associated with the emotional and psychological aspects of the discomfort. With new analytical tools, researchers can now differentiate between these two types of pain processing in the brain.
The current study used these advanced techniques to investigate how exposure to nature affects pain and its perception by the brain. To do this, 49 healthy volunteers were subjected to small electrical discharges to simulate acute pain while observing images of three different scenarios: nature, urban environments and a neutral indoor environment.
During the experiment, their brain activity was recorded using functional magnetic resonance imaging.
The experiment exposed participants to three types of visual scenarios: nature, urban environment and indoor environment, each accompanied by a corresponding sound.
During the test, each environment was displayed for 9 minutes while participants received 16 painful shocks and 16 non-painful shocks. All participants were rotated through each environment in an alternating order.
Each test followed a specific schedule:
A visual cue indicated whether the next shock would be painful (red) or non-painful (yellow) for 2 seconds.
Then, there was a variable interval of about 3.5 seconds before the shock was delivered.
The shock was then delivered for 0.5 seconds, at which time the visual cue reappeared for 1 second.
Another variable interval of 3.5 seconds followed the shock.
After every three shocks, participants rated pain intensity and discomfort on a scale for 6 seconds.
Finally, a fixed interval of 2 seconds ended each trial before the next.
Throughout the experiment, visual stimuli (nature, city or indoor environment) remained on the screen, except during the pain assessment phase. Electric shocks, both painful and non-painful, were administered to the back of the participants' left hand via electrodes.
The results showed that participants reported feeling less pain when they were looking at natural scenes, compared to the other environments. But the most interesting finding was at the brain level: exposure to nature reduced activity in brain regions associated with the emotional and cognitive aspects of pain, such as the thalamus, secondary somatosensory cortex and posterior insula.
In other words, nature not only reduced the pain perceived by people, but also directly impacted the areas of the brain involved in the experience of pain.
These findings are important because they show that nature can have a real analgesic effect, directly influencing how the brain processes pain.
Furthermore, the fact that the study used virtual images of nature suggests that even non-physical exposures, such as videos or virtual reality, can be beneficial.
This opens up new possibilities for non-drug pain management, which could be useful for people who suffer from chronic pain or who want to reduce their use of painkillers.
In short, this study reinforces the idea that contact with nature can help with physical and emotional recovery, not only by improving mood but also by reducing the perception of pain. Based on these findings, new research can explore innovative ways to use nature as a therapeutic tool for human health.
READ MORE:
Nature exposure induces analgesic effects by acting on nociception-related neural processing
Maximilian O. Steininger, Mathew P. White, Lukas Lengersdorff, Lei Zhang, Alexander J. Smalley, Simone Kühn & Claus Lamm
Nature Communications, volume 16, Article number: 2037 (2025)
Abstract:
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.
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