The Brain Loves a Zen Environment

A new study carried out by researchers at the University of Sheffield, shows that tranquil scenes have a positive impact on the brain.

For the experiment, researchers used the fact that waves breaking on a beach have almost the same sound as traffic on a busy motorway, both sound like a constant roar.

Participants were shown images of calm beaches and agitated motorways, while they listened to the same sound, associated with both scenery.

With the help of brain scanners, the brain's activity was measured and researchers found that natural, calm scenes determine different brain areas to interact, to synchronize, while the non-tranquil motorway scenes ended the connections within the brain.

The findings demonstrated that the environment impacts on our brain functions, and that calm, natural scenes create connections between brain areas whilst man-made environments disrupt them.

At this study took part academics from the University's Academic Unit of Clinical Psychiatry, Academic Radiology and the School of Architecture, along with the School of Engineering, Design and Technology at the University of Bradford and the Institute of Medicine and Neuroscience at Jülich, Germany.

Professor Peter Woodruff, from the Sheffield Cognition and Neuroimaging Laboratory (SCANLab), based in Academic Clinical Psychiatry within the University of Sheffield's Department of Neuroscience, said that “this work may have implications for the design of more tranquil public spaces and buildings, including hospitals, because it provides a way of measuring the impact of environmental and architectural features on people's psychological state.

“The project was a real collaborative effort, bringing together researchers from Psychiatry, Radiology and Architecture at the University of Sheffield, as well as Engineering at the University of Bradford and the Institute of Medicine and Neuroscience at Jülich, Germany.”

Dr Michael Hunter, from SCANLab, added that “people experience tranquility as a state of calmness and reflection, which is restorative compared with the stressful effects of sustained attention in day-to-day life.

“It is well known that natural environments induce feelings of tranquility whereas man-made, urban environments are experienced as non-tranquil.

“We wanted to understand how the brain works when it perceives natural environments, so we can measure its experience of tranquility.”

The research was published in the journal NeuroImage.