Natural scenery acts as a painkiller...Virtual reality exposure can also be used to relieve pain
Mar 14, 2025
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According to a study by a research team from the University of Exeter in the UK and the University of Vienna in Austria published in the scientific journal Nature Communications on the 14th, this was confirmed in an experiment to find out the difference in pain and brain activity felt when watching videos of urban or indoor office scenes and natural scenes.
The research team showed videos of urban or indoor office scenes and natural landscapes and investigated brain activity with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) while delivering pain with electric shocks to 49 Austrian adults.
The survey found that participants felt less pain when watching videos of natural scenes than city or indoor office videos, and brain scans also detected changes in certain brain responses related to pain handling. It has been shown that when watching a virtual natural scene, the primordial sensory signals transmitted to the brain decrease when sick. The research team explained that the results of this study show that virtual nature can have pain relief effects like real nature.
The research team reported that "numerous studies have reported that people feel less pain when exposed to nature, but the underlying reason was unclear."This study presents evidence that it is not vaguely the effect that nature is good for health 'plasivo' but because the brain is less responsive to pain information" It added that "What is confirmed in the experiment is about half of the drug's effectiveness, but it shows that the pain relief effect of nature is real." In addition, exposure to the natural environment using virtual reality (VR) is likely to be used as a non-pharmaceutical pain treatment strategy.
This article was translated by Naver AI translator.
