Weekly Roundup: Nature Lowers Pain in the Brain, Parenthood Keeps the Brain Young, Changing Positive Memories, and more on the Social Brain

Weekly roundup of all things the brain and human behaviour

There’s been some interesting research hitting the journals this week on the brain and various interactions in the real world.

I start with one on how nature can fundamentally change brain processing of pain, fascinating. Then onto one that shows that parenthood can keep the brain young! This may be counterintuitive - considering the stress that parenthood can subject us to (I know - been there, done that). Then on to dopamine and memory degradation - again the opposite to the standard narrative and finally how the brain uses blocks of information to help us navigate social interactions.

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Nature and Pain Processing in the Brain

I have reported multiple times on the positive impacts of nature on the brain ranging from better mood to better recovery and cognitive processing. And the evidence is compelling: nature is good for health and the brain so get into nature as often as you can.

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Research Hit: How Nature Is Good For Your Health

Research Hit: How Nature Lowers Stress in Your Brain

Research Hit: A Walk In Nature Boosts/Restores Attention and Cognitive Control

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But this research, by Steininger et al., a collaboration between Vienna, Exeter, and Birmingham Universities, analysed the brain’s processing of pain. In this experiment participants were given a modest electrical shock to trigger pain, they did sign up voluntarily, while viewing three types of video: one of a nature scene, one of an urban scene, and one of an indoor scene. All this while having their brain’s scanned.

So did watching different types of video change their pain perception or even their brain’s responses to pain?

Yes, it did. Pain levels were consistently and significantly lower when viewing the nature scene. This is interesting in itself - viewing nature lowers pain - good to know.

But what was the reason is this an analgesic affect? Was it the positive impact of nature and hence release of various neurotransmitters having damping effect - this would have been my logical thought. However the brain scanning showed something different.

It showed that the brain response was different - a bottom-up process therefore. So the raw sensory signal from the body that was processed in the brain is lower itself! This is fascinating because it shows how powerful a nature scene can be. Secondly what is also fascinating is that merely viewing a nature scene had this effect - other research has shown how effective being in nature can be.

So, if you’re in a bit of pain, looking at nature will help - no it won’t wipe out the pain but it will be a step lower. It could also therefore be recommended that hospitals have plenty of pictures of nature on the walls.

But from pain to stress - parenthood can be a stressful period of time and we would think that this would age our brains - not so according to this research.

How Parenthood Keeps Your Brain Young

This sounds counterintuitive - how on earth can all the stresses of parenthood keep the brain young. For example, I have reported multiple times on the brain and health impacts of sleep - and parenthood, particularly early parenthood, is often a time of disrupted and shortened sleep.

Ok caveat, this did not analyse all markers of ageing in the brain. The group of researchers, Edwina R. Orchard et al. of Rutgers University in the US analysed the data of over 37’000 individuals in the UK Biobank and mapped brain functional networks to the number of children they had.