The relationship between natural environments and human cognition has gathered increasing attention across disciplines, including neuroscience, environmental psychology, and public health. An expanding body of empirical evidence supports the notion that exposure to nature consistently promotes psychological and physiological well-being. However, our understanding of the neural mechanisms underlying these benefits remains limited. This scoping review synthesizes experimental findings from neuroimaging studies that have examined the effects of natural stimuli on brain function and cognitive-affective processing. Across real-world settings, controlled laboratory environments, and virtual reality, convergent neuroimaging findings from EEG, fMRI, fNIRS, and structural MRI indicate that exposure to natural stimuli is reliably associated with (i) acute reductions in activity within stress-related and self-referential circuits, (ii) shifts toward alpha/theta-dominated and more integrated large-scale network states consistent with attentional restoration, and (iii) longer-term macrostructural and white-matter advantages linked to cognition. While acknowledging heterogeneity, potential confounding, and predominantly correlational designs, these results are starting to delineate candidate neural mechanisms and moderators, which future research should test in preregistered, longitudinal, and mechanistic trials. These results highlight the potential role of natural environments for promoting mental health, with implications for neuroscience and public policy aimed at cultivating human well-being.

Background: Exposure to visually appealing food items can enhance their subjective realism, leading to increased cravings, salivation, and automatic approach tendencies. Prior research suggests that brief mindfulness instructions promoting dereification—recognizing stimuli as transient mental events—can mitigate these automatic reactions. Objectives: This study assesses whether brief mindfulness instruction can mitigate automatic consumption tendencies induced by food advertisements, exploring the corresponding behavioral, physiological, and neurophysiological mechanisms. Methods: Sixty participants were randomly assigned to two groups: one receiving brief mindfulness instruction and the other a non-dereifying control instruction while exposed to advertised foods. This was followed by an approach–avoidance task (AAT), during which behavioral data, salivary volume, event-related potentials (ERPs) from electroencephalogram recordings, and self-reports were collected. Results: The results showed no significant differences in approach behaviors between the groups. Hunger, food craving, and salivation levels increased uniformly in response to food cues for both groups. The N1, N2, P3, and late positive potential (LPP) ERPs remained unaltered by the instructions and consistent with the established AAT literature. Advertising heightened the appeal of neutral foods, as evidenced by increased N2, P3, and LPP responses. Conclusions: The brief mindfulness instruction failed to shield participants from the automatic responses elicited by food advertising, contrasting with the effects seen with non-advertised food.

Introduction: Premenstrual syndrome (PMS) is a cyclically recurring psychobiological condition affecting up to 47.8% of women of reproductive age, with considerable impact on daily functioning, quality of life and a documented economic burden linked to work absenteeism. Despite its prevalence, PMS remains substantially undertreated, and pharmacological approaches are often associated with undesirable side effects. Methods: This systematic review was conducted following PRISMA 2020 guidelines and evaluated the efficacy of contemplative practices (CPs), specifically mindfulness-based programs, yoga, and qigong, across psychobiological outcome domains in women with PMS. A comprehensive search of PubMed, Scopus, and Web of Science (2015–2026) identified 18 studies comprising 15 independent trials ( n = 1,080). Results: Across studies, CPs were associated with improvements in mood, stress, and anxiety, reductions in somatic complaints, and enhanced sleep quality. Movement-based CPs (yoga and qigong) produced broader physiological effects including reductions in blood pressure, preliminary evidence of hormonal modulation, and cardiopulmonary improvements, while non-movement mindfulness-based interventions more selectively targeted psychological and emotional domains. Methodological quality was moderate (PEDro median = 7), and most trials were rated as having some concerns on RoB 2.0. Discussion: These findings are interpreted within a dual-axis modulation framework, in which CPs may simultaneously attenuate HPA-driven suppression of reproductive function and support HPO axis activity via autonomic and anti-inflammatory pathways. Future research should prioritize luteal phase-confirmed designs, objective biomarkers including heart rate variability and hormonal profiles, and adequately powered trials to elucidate mechanisms and optimal dosing. Systematic review registration: https://osf.io/hdpyf/overview .

Within western social psychology and neuroscience, compassion is described as being conditioned by cost-benefit appraisals, such as the attribution of responsibility for the causes of suffering. Buddhist traditions maintain the possibility of cultivating and embodying unconditioned and universal forms of compassion. Whereas a growing body of empirical literature suggest that Buddhist-inspired compassion-based programs foster prosociality and well-being in healthy and clinical populations, there is no evidence that such compassionate disposition toward others can become unconditioned from moral judgement. To address this question, we collected and integrated self-report and behavioural data from expert Buddhist practitioners and trained novices using a previously validated within-subject experiment that manipulates contextual information to influence moral judgement towards suffering scenarios, and a newly designed approach-avoidance task. We found that context manipulation impacted responsibility and blame attribution in both groups and that experts’ reported willingness to help was higher and less influenced by context, compared to novices. Partial correlation networks highlighted a negative relationship between blame attribution and willingness to help in novices, but not in expert practitioners. Self-reported willingness to help was correlated to reaction times when approaching suffering stimuli. Approach behaviour was modulated by context in novice, but not in experts. This study provides initial evidence of a dissociation between moral attributions and prosocial attitude in expert Buddhist practitioners and challenges established evolutionary accounts of compassion in western psychology.

Attribution of responsibility for the causes of suffering is one of the main factors that influence responses to individuals in distress. While the role of attributional processes on prosocial motivation has been widely investigated in social psychology, only few attempts have been made to characterize their behavioural and neurophysiological underpinnings. This is partly due to the lack of stimuli that can facilitate within-subject experimental designs. To overcome this problem, we created a set of stimuli consisting of videos depicting people in different situations of distress. Each video is paired with short stories that aim to manipulate the perceived degree of responsibility of the main character.To validate the stimuli, we investigated the effect of different context-video pairs on self-report measures of participants’ subjective experience. We found that different contexts preceding the same video can influence blame and responsibility judgments, affective responses and willingness to help.In a complementary analysis, we replicated previous findings on the influence of empathy and responsibility on willingness to help. However, we did not observe a negative correlation between responsibility and empathy as described in attribution theories.Finally, we observed a general increase in responses times when videos were paired with Responsible contexts. We provide interpretations of this finding that can relate attribution accounts to prominent theories in moral psychology.Overall, this study highlights the possibility of falsifying existing theories on attributional processes by implementing a set of stimuli that includes multiple scenarios and allow for the collection of third person measures in within-subject designs.