Interplay among Anxiety, Digital Environmental Exposure, and Cognitive Control: Implications of Natural Settings.

Inhibitory control performance may differ greatly as a function of individual differences such as anxiety. Nonetheless, how cognitive control proficiency might be influenced by exposure to various environments and how anxiety traits might impact these effects remain unexplored. A cohort of thirty healthy volunteers participated in the study. Participants performed a Go/No-Go task before exposure to a 'forest' and 'urban' virtual environment, in a counterbalanced design, before repeating the GNG task. The State-Trait Anxiety Inventory (STAI) was finally filled-in. Our findings unveiled an initial negative correlation between anxiety trait levels and GNG task performance, consistent with the established literature attributing difficulties in inhibitory functionality to anxiety. Additionally, different environmental exposures reported opposite trends. Exposure to the 'forest' environment distinctly improved the GNG performance in relation to anxiety traits, while the 'urban' setting demonstrated adverse effects on task performance. These results underscore the intricate relationship among cognitive control, environmental exposure, and trait anxiety. In particular, our findings highlight the potential of natural settings, such as forests, to mitigate the impact of anxiety on inhibition. This might have implications for interventions aimed at improving cognitive control.

Correction: Meneguzzo et al. Short-Term Effects of Forest Therapy on Mood States: A Pilot Study. Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health 2021, 18, 9509.

The authors wish to make the following corrections to this paper [...].

Short-Term Effects of Forest Therapy on Mood States: A Pilot Study.

Immersion in forest environments was shown to produce beneficial effects to human health, in particular psychophysical relaxation, leading to its growing recognition as a form of integrative medicine. However, limited evidence exists about the statistical significance of the effects and their association with external and environmental variables and personal characteristics. This experimental study aimed to substantiate the very concept of forest therapy by means of the analysis of the significance of its effects on the mood states of anxiety, depression, anger and confusion. Seven forest therapy sessions were performed in remote areas and a control one in an urban park, with participants allowed to attend only one session, resulting in 162 psychological self-assessment questionnaires administered before and after each session. Meteorological comfort, the concentration of volatile organic compounds in the forest atmosphere and environmental coherence were identified as likely important external and environmental variables. Under certain conditions, forest therapy sessions performed in remote sites were shown to outperform the control session, at least for anxiety, anger and confusion. A quantitative analysis of the association of the outcomes with personal sociodemographic characteristics revealed that only sporting habits and age were significantly associated with the outcomes for certain psychological domains.

Comparative Study of the Restorative Effects of Forest and Urban Videos during COVID-19 Lockdown: Intrinsic and Benchmark Values.

The prolonged lockdown imposed to contain the COrona VIrus Disease 19 COVID-19 pandemic prevented many people from direct contact with nature and greenspaces, raising alarms for a possible worsening of mental health. This study investigated the effectiveness of a simple and affordable remedy for improving psychological well-being, based on audio-visual stimuli brought by a short computer video showing forest environments, with an urban video as a control. Randomly selected participants were assigned the forest or urban video, to look at and listen to early in the morning, and questionnaires to fill out. In particular, the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory (STAI) Form Y collected in baseline condition and at the end of the study and the Part II of the Sheehan Patient Rated Anxiety Scale (SPRAS) collected every day immediately before and after watching the video. The virtual exposure to forest environments showed effective to reduce perceived anxiety levels in people forced by lockdown in limited spaces and environmental deprivation. Although significant, the effects were observed only in the short term, highlighting the limitation of the virtual experiences. The reported effects might also represent a benchmark to disentangle the determinants of health effects due to real forest experiences, for example, the inhalation of biogenic volatile organic compounds (BVOC).