Effects of Brief Nature Exposure on Brain Functioning and Stress Reactivity

ConditionStress (Psychology)

Trial statusRecruiting

Trial phaseNot listed

Trial typeObservational

Biological sexAll

Age18-25

SponsorNational Institutes of Health (NIH)

About this trial

This study is focused on understanding the impact of time spent in nature (relative to an urban control) on stress, neural, and cardiac functioning in people experiencing high levels of stress, depression, and anxiety.

Eligibility criteria

This trial does not accept healthy volunteers

Qualifiers

Meets cut-off for high level of perceived stress on PSS-10 during screening (>27 total score); Current or past depressive and anxiety disorders, if present on SCID-5 assessment, will be ncluded due to their high prevalence and overlap with perceived stress

Normal, or corrected to normal, vision (due to the visual nature of the EEG tasks)

If on psychotropic medication, stable regime for > 1 month

Disqualifiers

Major medical conditions with CNS sequelae (e.g., seizure disorders, multiple sclerosis, significant, uncontrolled cardiovascular pathology) Past or present neurological problems (including seizures and head trauma resulting in neurological or cognitive sequelae)

IQ estimate <75 on the Test of Premorbid Functioning

Current or past history of severe mental illness (e.g., bipolar schizophrenia spectrum disorder, or current or past history of substance use disorders

Trial population

Individuals endorsing high stress levels will be recruited from the community and UCSF clinician outreach through flyer, media advertisements. Current or past depressive and anxiety disorders, if present, will be included due to their high prevalence and overlap with perceived stress.

Trial design

Design model

Case-crossover

Time perspective

Prospective

Treatments tested in this trial

Nature vs. Urban walks
Other intervention
We will evaluate the impact of spending time in nature vs. an urban control on EEG-based measures of reward and attention and resting heart rate variability

Treatment groups

20 Participants

are divided into 1 treatment group

Group A: Within-group study1 intervention

Trial outcomes

Primary outcomes

Brain functioning

EEG (neural) measures of attention and reward processing ; resting EEG (including frequency-based analyses of canonical frequency bands, e.g., gamma, beta, alpha, delta, theta) and event-related potential measures (reflecting attention, e.g, P300 and reward/affective processing, e.g., reward positivity, late positive potential).

Time frame

~1 hour after walking condition

Heart Rate Variability

This measure reflect the variation in heart beat rate, over time. Specifically we will measure heart rate during the EEG recordings and calculate the RMSSD (Root Mean Square of Successive Differences) of heartbeat R-R intervals.

Time frame

~ 1 hour after walking manipulaation

Sponsors and contacts

Click on the lead sponsor to view all of their trials.

National Institutes of Health (NIH)

Lead sponsor

University of California, San Francisco

Sponsor institution

Source ClinicalTrials.gov

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