Nature exposure offers various health benefits, including potential relief from physical pain. However, previous studies relying primarily on self-reported pain make it difficult to determine whether these reductions are genuinely pain-specific and to disentangle the mechanisms underlying nature's analgesic effects. In our new paper, we present findings from a preregistered neuroimaging study showing that participants who view virtual nature – compared to virtual urban or indoor scenes – not only report lower levels of acute pain but also exhibit reduced brain responses associated with nociceptive and somatosensory pain processing. Specifically, viewing digital nature was linked to reduced responses in a highly sensitive neural pain marker (the neurologic pain signature) as well as lower activity in the thalamus, secondary somatosensory cortex, and posterior insula. These results suggest that nature-induced analgesia is driven by direct neural changes in pain-related sensory rather than affective-motivational aspects of pain processing. Our findings highlight nature as a promising non-pharmacological pain treatment and emphasize the importance of integrating biological, psychological, social, and environmental factors into comprehensive pain management strategies.

Steininger, M. O., White, M. P., Lengersdorff, L., Zhang, L., Smalley, A. J., Kühn, S., & Lamm, C. (2025). Nature exposure induces analgesic effects by acting on nociception-related neural processing. Nature Communications, 16(1). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-025-56870-2