Neural Correlates of Environmental Thought, Emotion, and Behavior

Over the past several decades, studies have shown cognitive, affective, and behavioral outcomes of exposure to specific environments, such as natural environments. The benefits described from natural environmental exposure include but are not limited to, improved endogenous attention, improved mood, reduced impulsivity, and lower stress. Feelings of connection to nature are related to increased sustainable behavior and environmental concern. However, the neuroscientific research in this continually growing field is still limited. Previous work to understand the neural correlates of environment processing, cognitive outcomes from environmental exposure, sustainable behavior, and environmental concern has employed both spectral and event-related EEG methodologies, as well as some neuro-imaging work. However, there is a need to further study the human-environment psychological relationship from a neuroscientific perspective.

To that effect, this Research Topic aims to present and discuss recent neuroscientific work within the broader field of environmental psychology. Any contributions on the neural correlates of environmental thought, emotion, and/or behavior, in the form of original research articles, reviews, mini-reviews, systematic reviews, and clinical trials, are appropriate for submission to this topic. Methodology may include neuroimaging (including functional), neurophysiology, computational neuroscience, or any other neuroscientific techniques.

Keywords: cognition neuroscience, environmental psychology

Important Note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.