Eye movement patterns drive stress reduction during Japanese garden viewing
A collaborative research team including Professor Seiko Goto from the Faculty of Environmental Science at Nagasaki University; Professor Karl Herrup from the Department of Neurobiology at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine; Associate Professor Minkai Sun from the School of Architecture and Urban Planning at Suzhou University of Science and Technology; Professor Keita Yamaguchi from the Graduate School of Global Environmental Studies at Kyoto University; Professor Hiroki Takase from the Division of Psychology in the Faculty of Arts at Shinshu University; Professor Tomoki Kato from the Graduate School of Art Studies at Kyoto University of the Arts; and Associate Professor Aoi Koga from the Center for Information and Communication Technology at Nagasaki University has published a study in Frontiers in Neuroscience that investigated the effects of viewing traditional Japanese gardens on stress reduction.
The research was conducted at the Murin-an garden, a renowned Japanese garden in Kyoto, and another garden located on the Kyoto University campus. The study assessed changes in participants’ physiological and psychological responses to viewing each environment.
Aim: The aim of this study is to clarify the role of eye movements in the reduction of physiological and psychological metrics of stress during Japanese garden viewing.
Methods: We chose the well-structured Murin-an garden as a test site and a garden with similar visual elements but less well-maintained as a control site. We measured pulse rates and eye movements to monitor physiological responses. Psychological responses were tracked with the POMS2 Brief form and a short questionnaire.
Results: We found that the Murin-an garden was more effective in decreasing pulse rate and improving mood. Also, in the Murin-an garden the participants’ gaze ranged more broadly across the visual field and moved more rapidly. Contrary to our expectations, in neither garden did pulse rate rise or fall based on the particular object a participant was viewing.
Conclusion: Visual stimuli of a well-designed garden can elicit significant stress reduction. Our data suggest that the composition of the elements and the attention to maintenance of a garden result in viewers shifting their gaze more frequently and more quickly. These appear to be the key drivers behind the stress reduction effect. Although we had hypothesized that specific visual elements in the garden would be responsible for reducing measures of stress, our data instead suggest that it is the overall pattern of rapid horizontal eye movements, induced by the garden design, that drives the observed stress reduction. We draw an analogy between our results and the technique known as EMDR (eye movement desensitization and reprocessing) whose practitioners use rapid gaze shifts to elicit stress reduction.
KEYWORDS: Murin-an, pulse rate, EMDR, eye tracking, visual stimuli
Photo courtesy of Ueyakato Landscape Co., LTD.
Journal: Frontiers in Neuroscience
Title: Eye movement patterns drive stress reduction during Japanese garden viewing
Authors: Seiko Goto 1, Hiroki Takase 2, Keita Yamaguchi 3, Tomoki Kato 4,
Minkai Sun 5, Aoi Koga 6, Tiankai Liang 1, Isamu A. Poy 7 and Karl Herrup 8
1 Faculty of Environmental Science, Nagasaki University, Nagasaki, Japan, 2 Division of Psychology, Faculty of Arts, Shinshu University, Matsumoto, Japan, 3 Graduate School of Global Environmental Studies, Kyoto University, Kyoto, Japan, 4 Graduate School of Art Studies, Kyoto University of the Arts, Kyoto, Japan, 5 School of Architecture and Urban Planning, Suzhou University of Science and Technology, Suzhou, China, 6 Center for Information and Communication Technology, Nagasaki University, Nagasaki, Japan, 7 JACOBS School of Engineering, University of California, San Diego, La Jolla, CA, United States, 8 Department of Neurobiology, University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, Pittsburgh, PA, United States
DOI: 10.3389/fnins.2025.1581080
Publication Date: 15 May 2025
For more details, please see the full article in Frontiers in Neuroscience.
https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/neuroscience/articles/10.3389/fnins.2025.1581080/full
