Neural Noise

Nature images more visually engaging than urban images: evidence from neural oscillations

3 min read

  • Nature images were found more visually engaging than urban images, with evidence from neural oscillations in the brain.1
  • Neural oscillations support electrophysiology and human neuroscience; weak BCI link.1
  • Useful as context for engagement and attention metrics.1 1

Weekly enrichment (2026-07-20)

  • EEG between-subjects study (Amy McDonnell and David Strayer, University of Utah) in which 58 adults passively viewed 10 min of nature or urban images; final EEG samples were 30 nature versus 28 urban, exceeding the a priori power analysis requirement of N = 52; published in Frontiers in Human Neuroscience 2025 (DOI 10.3389/fnhum.2025.1575102).2
  • Parietal alpha power (8–12 Hz at Pz), an inverse index of visual engagement, was significantly lower for nature (M = 2.37, SE 0.38) than urban viewing (M = 4.36, SE 0.70) on log-transformed data: t(56) = −2.34, p = 0.023, Cohen’s d = −0.62 (medium-to-large), indicating nature images are more visually engaging.2
  • Frontal theta power (4–8 Hz at Cz), a marker of cognitive demand linked to dorsal anterior cingulate cortex activity, was numerically lower for nature (M = 2.94, SE 0.27) than urban (M = 4.30, SE 0.65) but not significant: t(56) = −1.55, p = 0.126, Cohen’s d = −0.41.2
  • On the Perceived Restorativeness Scale, nature images scored far higher (M = 7.41 versus 3.91; t(56) = 9.58, p < 0.001, 95% CI 2.76–4.23, Cohen’s d = 2.51), a very large effect that served as a manipulation check confirming the two image sets differed in restorative quality.2
  • Signal processing used a BIOPAC BioNomadix wireless system with 1-s Hanning-windowed epochs and an FFT extracting 1–30 Hz power; electrodes Pz and Cz were selected a priori and confirmed post hoc as the sites of maximal alpha and theta, and three recordings were discarded due to wireless interference.2
  • The design tests Attention Restoration Theory’s “soft fascination” claim—that nature engages involuntary attention while letting effortful directed attention recover—during actual viewing rather than via pre/post tasks, and replicates the alpha findings of Hopman et al. (2020) and Grassini et al. (2019); a prior 40-min walk study (n = 92) by the same group found higher frontal theta after urban than nature walks.2
  • Context: an earlier EEG study (n = 32) similarly found natural scenery was rated more relaxing and produced event-related potentials and spectral patterns consistent with lower attentional and cognitive load than urban scenes, reinforcing parietal alpha and frontal theta as candidate engagement and workload biomarkers usable in passive/neuroadaptive BCI.3

Footnotes

  1. https://news.google.com/rss/articles/CBMinAFBVV95cUxOWXFQRm1rZXQ3N0U5aDFsbVRVekRxSlFySjJUNm1GbFUwWXQzSWR5aUZWeWRZeS0zWmxYWlVtVUhOZHBkQmhyaDZMYkVMNWwxWWRla2RZMHlCSTJHaXRBSEgxU1VkdGxyb0ZTdHJ5SHVTSmZtLVBWR3dJNGtZc1pXSzBaVFIxSEdtMHFxNWEwMncwV2NlLXZmeG5USmE?oc=5 ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4

  2. https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/human-neuroscience/articles/10.3389/fnhum.2025.1575102/full ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5 ↩6

  3. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0272494418303360 ↩

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