Effects of Landscape on Psychological Response and Brain Region Activity

• Main Authors: Ying-Ju Lin, 林映汝
• Other Authors: 張俊彥
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2012
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/67590614051982816631

碩士 === 國立臺灣大學 === 園藝學研究所 === 100 === Many studies have shown that people prefer natural environment than urban environment, and exposure to the natural environment can restore attention from fatigue. Most of previous studies on the restorativeness of natural landscape used indirect measurements such as scale or physiological data, seldom direct evidence was obtained. With the development of functional magnetic resonance imaging in recent years, observation of the activation of brain regions helps us to understand the origins of a variety of psychological reactions and behavior. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to understand the psychological response and brain region activity when viewing different landscapes using questionnaire and fMRI. Psychological response was measured by questionnaire of restorative experience and perceived restorativeness, and the brain region activity was measured by fMRI. The current study was divided into two parts. First, four types of landscapes were used to explore human response toward landscape types, including cities, mountains, forests, and water bodies. In the second part, the effects of four restorative environmental characteristics based on Attention Restoration Theory were tested. In the first part, the results of psychological response showed that viewing pictures of urban landscape had lower attention restoration than nature, and forests had lower attention restoration than mountains and water bodies. The results of brain region activity showed that Right superior parietal lobe was activated when viewing city pictures. Moreover, only two brain regions related to visual reaction activated when viewing mountains and water bodies. Right superior parietal lobe is about top-down attention and may possibly relate to directed attention. In the second part, the results showed that coherence environment gave the lowest possibility of restorative experience among four and there were no significant differences on restoration among being away, fascination, and compatibility environments. In the perceived restorativeness scale, the compatibility environment had slightly higher attention restoration than the other three environments. The results of brain region activity, however, showed that the brain region activities related to visual reaction were all active in the four environments and many brain regions on frontal and parietal lobe were activated when viewing fascination environment. Frontal and parietal lobes are considered to handle high-level cognitive system and may consume more resources. The result implied lower attention restoration when viewing fascination environment. In conclusion, natural environment has more attention restoration effect than urban environment, and mountain and water have more attention restoration effect than forest in both psychological response and brain region activity. Future can go further into the effectiveness of the natural landscape perception mechanism to confirm the importance of the natural environment, and will also have a discussion of different direction in the field of neuroscience.