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For many people, spending time in nature can be a relaxing, enjoyable experience. Immersing oneself in the luscious greens of a field of grass, or the shade of a forested trail can be truly calming and healing.
Recently, researchers from the University of Exeter and the University of Vienna have published a study in Nature Communications that shows that not only does being in nature help reduce pain, just looking at nature could have a similar effect.
Seeing Nature Versus Being in Nature
According to the BBC, the study showed that people who viewed images of nature experienced less pain than those who saw images of a city or an indoor office. In addition, scans of the participants’ brains also showed changes in brain responses associated with processing pain.
Essentially, this means that seeing nature has an effect on pain, just like being in nature does. This is welcome news for people who do not live near green spaces.
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Virtual Reality Versus 2-D
However, according to a University of Exeter press release, a few months later the researchers published another study, this time in Pain, showing that scenes of nature in virtual reality had more pain-killing power than 2-D scenes.
In order to test how virtual reality affects the sensation of pain, the researchers set up an experiment with 29 healthy participants. These participants were shown two different types of nature scenes, one in virtual reality and one in 2-D, after pain was delivered to their forearms via electric shocks.
The researchers found that the immersive virtual reality scenes reduced the development and feeling of pain in the participants. In fact, the virtual reality was almost two times as effective as the 2-D scenes were.
There are many implications to these studies, especially concerning how people perceive and experience pain. However, more importantly, there are also potential practical implications to the studies. Though getting out into nature can be helpful in terms of treating pain, there are many people in the world, especially people who suffer from long-term pain who are unable to do so.
Dr. Sam Hughes, Senior Lecturer in Pain Neuroscience at the University of Exeter and one of the study’s leaders, said in the press release: “Not everyone is able to get out for walks in nature, particularly those living with long term health conditions like chronic pain. Our study is the first to look at the effect of prolonged exposure to a virtual reality nature scene on symptoms seen during long term pain sensitivity,”
If the experience of nature combats pain, and there are people who cannot experience nature, then, as these researchers have shown, the solution is to bring nature to those people.
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