Top-Down Processing and Nature Connectedness Predict Psychological and Physiological Effects of Nature

Abstract

Exposure to natural environments has positive psychological effects. These effects have been explained from an evolutionary perspective, emphasizing humans’ innate preference for natural stimuli. We tested whether top-down cognitive processes influence the psychophysiological effects of environments. The source of an ambiguous sound was attributed to either nature (waterfall) or industry (factory). The results suggested that the participants’ subjective experiences were more pleasant and relaxed when the sound was attributed to nature than to industry. The influence of source attribution was also reflected in physiological measures that were free of subjective biases. The power of the brain’s lower alpha band activity was stronger in the nature scenario than in the industry condition. The individuals’ nature connectedness moderated the influence of source attribution on theta band power and electrodermal activity. The results support an evolutionary-constructivist perspective which assumes that the individual’s meanings and associations modulate the innate bottom-up effects of nature exposure.

Exposure to nature is associated with decreased functional connectivity within the distress network: A resting state EEG study

“…Of relevance, no significant associations were detected in other frequency bands (e.g., alpha and theta) previously associated with nature exposure and stress reduction (Ulrich, 1981;Chang et al, 2008;Grassini et al, 2019Grassini et al, , 2022Sahni and Kumar, 2020;Koivisto et al, 2022). The discrepancies between previous reports and the current research may be explained by several differences in study designs and methods.…”

“…In this research field, previous EEG studies showed that experiencing natural environments is associated with several neurophysiological patterns linked to stress reduction, including increased alpha ( Ulrich, 1981 ; Chang et al, 2008 ; Grassini et al, 2019 , 2022 ; Sahni and Kumar, 2020 ; Koivisto et al, 2022 ; Olszewska-Guizzo et al, 2022b ) and theta power ( Olszewska-Guizzo et al, 2022b ), as well as decreased beta activity ( Grassini et al, 2019 ).…”

Mental imagery of nature induces positive psychological effects

“…Previous research on the psychological benefits and health effects of nature has focused mostly on exposure to real environments or laboratory simulation of environments (e.g., pictures, videos) and mostly on the bottom-up processing of information. Recently, the contribution of topdown processes has gained increased attention (Haga et al, 2016;Koivisto et al, 2022;Menzel & Reese, 2022;Ratcliffe & Korpela, 2016;Van Hedger et al, 2019). The present study examined whether mental imagery (top-down processing) of restorative natural environments could foster positive psychological effects as compared to imagery of non-restorative urban and restorative built environments.…”

“…The sound was evaluated as more psychologically restorative when it was attributed to nature, as compared with attribution to urban setting. Koivisto et al, (2022) showed that such top-down interpretations were reflected not only in subjectively evaluated relaxation but also in increase of brain's alpha band activity, which is assumed to reflect relaxed state of mind (Aftanas & Golocheikine, 2001;Lagopoulos et al, 2009;Lomas et al, 2015) and has been observed also during viewing natural images (Grassini et al, 2019) and videos (Grassini et al, 2022). Van Hedger et al, (2019) found that scrambled sounds for which their origin was concealed were aesthetically preferred over urban sounds only when they could be recognized and associated with nature-not because of their acoustic features per se.…”

“…A recent study showed that people with different nature connection levels had variable attention allocations on trees or buildings, as measured with eye movement recordings (Chen et al, 2022), suggesting that the observer's top-down processes influence whether they prefer to look at natural or non-natural objects. In addition, the effects of source attribution of an ambiguous sound to nature or industry on brain activity and skin conductance were shown to be moderated by nature connectedness (Koivisto et al, 2022). When the participants were told that the sound originated from nature, the brain's alpha activity and the skin conductance responses were different as compared with the condition in which the sound was told to originate from industry -the strength of these effects depended on nature connectedness, suggesting that the top-down effects of environmental exposure depend on individual factors.…”