Hey Wouter, thanks for the initiative. I‘d like to be added to this list if there is still space. Thanks ☺️

Excited to share that our recent study on nature exposure 🌲 and its impact on subjective and neural pain processing 🧠⚡ (rdcu.be/evMrv) was featured on Austrian national television (ORF). From minute 11 to 15 you can catch me and @clauslamm.bsky.social discussing the study design and key findings.

🌍 So excited to share our new paper “Machine learning identified key individual and nation-level factors predicting climate-relevant beliefs and behaviors”, just out in npj Climate Action!

🔗 Fully Open Access: rdcu.be/ele9s 1/

🚨 Come work with us!

3-year fully funded PhD position in Social and Cognitive Neuroscience @univie.ac.at @clauslamm.bsky.social to join our project investigating prosocial behavior under uncertainty.

More info: shorturl.at/1fnb2

Please share widely 🔁

My talented colleague and friend @todorova.bsky.social just published a paper I had the pleasure of contributing to. We explore how climate action and brain health are deeply linked. Climate action can benefit our brains, and our brains shape how we act. Caring for the planet = caring for ourselves.

There is also some evidence suggesting nature may help with chronic pain as well: 10.1002/ejp.4727, 10.1016/j.pmn.2023.06.014, 10.3389/fbuil.2019.00142. I'm curious to see how our findings translate to chronic pain and am glad to hear nature has been helpful for you in pain management so far.

Big thanks to @clauslamm.bsky.social, Mat White, Lukas Lengersdorff, @lei-zhang.bsky.social, Alex Smalley and Simone Kühn, the reviewers/editors @naturecomms.bsky.social and @fwf-at.bsky.social for making this project possible. Follow me for more research on how nature impacts aversive experiences.

Nature isn’t just relaxing – it can actively reduce pain, both on a subjective and a neural level. Thus, nature-based interventions may offer a promising way to complement pain management strategies, even when using virtual instead of real-world nature. 5/6

The analgesic effect wasn’t just due to pitting nature against aversive or unmatched comparators. Consistent with our neural findings, which point to attention-based mechanisms rather than belief-driven effects, nature may effectively shift attention away from pain and towards our surroundings. 4/6

In line with past research (upcoming meta-analysis soon), nature was linked to reduced self-reported pain. Addressing limitations of prior studies, we compared virtual nature to a matched urban and an additional indoor scene – both associated with higher subjective and neural pain responses. 3/6

Using fMRI, we show that watching virtual nature reduced activation in a highly sensitive neural pain marker (NPS) and several key brain regions (thalamus, S2, pINS). Contrary to typical placebo research findings, nature acted directly on sensory, and not emotional/motivational, aspects of pain. 2/6

Can nature relieve pain 🌳🧠⚡️? Our latest preregistered neuroimaging study, now out in Nature Communications, suggests it can. We find that virtual nature exposure reduces both subjective and neural pain responses, even when compared to matched control environments. A 🧵 1/6 doi.org/10.1038/s414...

If possible, I would be happy to be included in the starter pack. I have a focus on environmental neuroscience and research the influence of nature on the processing of aversive experiences. I would be happy to become part of the community 😃

We are a bit late for this, but happy new year from the SCAN unit! 🎈
We are thankful for the productive and joyful times together and looking forward to another year of exciting research! 🤩
Here is our 2024 in review 👇

Somehow the link doesn’t work. It says the session has expired 🧐

yesterday, @clauslamm.bsky.social and I explained our research on Austrian kids TV 🧠🐕as you can see in the pics, we had a lot of fun doing it but my favourite moment was getting a picture of my niece watching the show! ♥️ #1: shorturl.at/isxPY #2: shorturl.at/gsN89 #neuroscience #outreach #dogfMRI