Effect of Indoor Forest Bathing on Reducing Feelings of Fatigue Using Cerebral Activity as an Indicator

Chie Imamura, Kiyomi Sakakibara, Kyosuke Arai, Hideki Ohira, Yuhei Yamaguchi and Hitoshi Yamada
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Chie Imamura: Toyota Central R&D Labs., Inc., Nagakute 480-1192, Japan
Kiyomi Sakakibara: Toyota Central R&D Labs., Inc., Nagakute 480-1192, Japan
Kyosuke Arai: Frontier Research Center, Toyota Motor Corporation, Toyota 471-8572, Japan
Hideki Ohira: Department of Psychology, Nagoya University, Nagoya 464-8601, Japan
Yuhei Yamaguchi: Frontier Research Center, Toyota Motor Corporation, Toyota 471-8572, Japan
Hitoshi Yamada: Frontier Research Center, Toyota Motor Corporation, Toyota 471-8572, Japan

IJERPH, 2022, vol. 19, issue 11, 1-16

Abstract: We created an indoor forest bathing environment in a sunlight-type environmentally controlled chamber and both physiological and psychological measurements were conducted for the evaluation of mental fatigue reduction. At first, a working memory load experiment was performed among 10 participants in a space without plants to identify an indicator correlating with feelings of fatigue, using the cerebral activity of the prefrontal cortex. Then, the indicator was used to evaluate whether a 20-min exposure to an indoor forest bathing environment reduced the level of the feeling of fatigue. The working memory load experiment demonstrated that, when mental fatigue increased, the amount of oxygenated hemoglobin (oxy-Hb) in the right prefrontal cortex and the right-left difference in oxy-Hb (ΔRL oxy-Hb) in the prefrontal cortex increased. These were proposed as indicators of mental fatigue. In the indoor forest bathing experiment, staying in an indoor green space showed that the subjective values of feeling of fatigue decreased and ΔRL oxy-Hb decreased. Since these results demonstrated an opposite effect to the increase in ΔRL oxy-Hb related to the feeling of fatigue, it was inferred that the decrease in ΔRL oxy-Hb reflected the fatigue reduction in the indoor forest bathing environment.

Keywords: indoor forest bathing; biophilic; brain activity; near-infrared spectroscopy; prefrontal cortex activity; reduction of feeling of fatigue (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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