Can’t focus after a stressful day? Most research on nature and cognitive function starts at that point, examining whether natural environments support recovery after mental fatigue. But a new review asks a different question: can contact with nature support cognitive functioning before stress hits, and potentially build cognitive resilience against future strain? The authors call this understudied process “instoration.”Beyond the Tired Mind: New Review Explores Nature’s Baseline Cognitive Benefits. Image by MagnificNote: This article is intended for general information and educational purposes. It summarizes scientific research in accessible language for a broad audience and is not an official scientific press release.Environmental psychology has extensively studied how exposure to natural environments relates to cognition, mood, and perceived restoration. Traditionally, this research has focused on what happens after people experience mental fatigue, emotional strain, or experimentally induced stress.A new review examines a less studied question: what happens when participants encounter nature without first completing a stressful or cognitively demanding task?The paper was written by Johanna Prugger and Simone Kühn, whose affiliations include the Max Planck Institute for Human Development, the Einstein Center for Youth Mental Health, Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin, University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf, and the Max Planck UCL Centre for Computational Psychiatry and Ageing Research.Published online in the Journal of Environmental Psychology on June 12, 2026, the review analyzed 54 studies comprising 61 experiments published between 1996 and 2024. The authors distinguished between “restorative” effects, involving recovery after stress or fatigue, and “instorative” effects, measured from a neutral baseline without prior depletion.What the Researchers InvestigatedThe authors examined whether research on nature exposure and cognitive function has focused so heavily on stress recovery that another potential process has remained underexplored.In a typical restorative experiment, participants complete a stressful, emotionally demanding, or cognitively tiring task before encountering a natural or urban environment. Researchers then assess whether their functioning changes following that exposure.The authors use the term “instoration” to describe a process different from restoration. Restoration refers to recovering cognitive or emotional functioning after stress or fatigue has already occurred. Instoration refers to enhancement from a neutral baseline, before any stress, fatigue, or decline in functioning has been documented. In an instorative design, participants encounter a natural or urban environment without first completing a stressor, demanding task, or cognitive assessment. This allows researchers to examine changes that occur without prior depletion.The review addressed three central questions:How often have researchers examined nature exposure without first inducing stress or fatigue?Do experiments using neutral baselines report measurable cognitive or affective differences between natural and urban environments?Do commonly used research methods clearly distinguish restoration from instoration?How the Review Was ConductedThe researchers searched MEDLINE via PubMed and Google Scholar using terms related to natural and urban environments, restoration, instoration, cognition, attention, mood, and affect. They also examined reference lists and conducted backward and forward citation searches.The search was conducted between August 2024 and April 2025 without publication-year restrictions. The authors describe it as thorough but acknowledge that it may not have identified every relevant study.Using an iterative, data-driven approach inspired by Grounded Theory, they classified the experiments into three categories:Explicit stressor studies. Participants completed a deliberate stress-inducing or fatiguing procedure before environmental exposure. These procedures included difficult mental arithmetic, public-speaking tasks, time pressure, cognitively demanding exercises, and emotionally distressing material.Implicit stressor studies. Participants did not undergo an intentional stress procedure, but they completed cognitive or affective assessments before environmental exposure. Some test batteries lasted between 5 and 75 minutes, leading the authors to classify them as possible sources of mental fatigue.Instorative studies. Participants completed no stressor, demanding task, or cognitive or affective assessment before environmental exposure. These experiments were designed to measure outcomes without documented prior depletion.The studies used different forms of nature exposure, including walks in forests or parks, photographs, videos, natural sounds, and virtual reality. Outcomes were assessed through cognitive tasks, affect questionnaires, perceived-restoration scales, physiological measures, and neuroimaging.Rather than calculating an overall effect size, the authors coded whether each experiment reported statistically significant results favoring natural environments, results favoring urban environments, mixed findings, or no significant differences.What Makes This Review NewThe review’s central contribution is its distinction between restoration and instoration in nature-exposure research. Rather than treating all reported effects as restorative, the authors classified experiments according to whether participants experienced stress or fatigue before environmental exposure.The authors found that restorative experiments outnumbered instorative experiments by more than five to one: 45 compared with eight. According to the paper, this imbalance reveals a substantial research bias toward studying recovery rather than changes from a neutral baseline.The review also identifies a methodological concern. Cognitive tests administered before environmental exposure may themselves produce fatigue. Experiments without an intentional stressor may therefore still measure recovery from test-related depletion.Another concern involves the Perceived Restorativeness Scale, or PRS. Several of its items assess qualities such as fascination, compatibility, and environmental coherence rather than recovery from fatigue specifically. The authors argue that the scale may therefore capture both restorative and instorative responses without clearly distinguishing between them.Key Findings from the Review1. Instorative research remains rareOnly eight experiments met the authors’ criteria for an instorative design. By comparison, 45 experiments were categorized as restorative. The authors therefore conclude that nature exposure from a neutral baseline has received substantially less research attention than exposure following stress or fatigue.2. All four instorative cognition experiments reported positive findingsFour instorative experiments examined cognitive outcomes. All four reported at least one statistically significant result favoring natural over urban exposure, producing a 100% positive-finding rate within this small subgroup. This percentage does not mean that every participant improved or that every cognitive measurement favored nature. It means that all four experiments met the review’s coding criteria for reporting a beneficial nature effect.The authors explicitly state that this result requires caution because it is based on only four experiments and may be affected by publication bias. Null findings in an underexplored field may be less likely to be published.3. Affective results were less consistentSix instorative experiments assessed affective outcomes. Four reported positive findings, representing 66.7%. One produced mixed results, while another found no statistically significant difference. Three instorative experiments measured perceived restoration, and all three reported findings favoring natural environments. However, the authors question whether the measurement tool used in this research clearly separates restoration from instoration.4. Restorative studies also frequently reported findings favoring naturePositive findings were not limited to instorative experiments. Most restorative experiments also reported cognitive and affective results favoring natural over urban environments.For cognitive outcomes, positive findings appeared in 75% of experiments that deliberately induced stress or fatigue and in 61.9% of experiments where fatigue may have resulted from earlier testing. The authors suggest that recovery may be easier to detect when participants begin with greater stress or fatigue. However, the review does not establish that greater initial stress causes stronger restorative effects.5. Studies focused mainly on deliberate, goal-directed attentionMost cognitive tasks measured endogenous attention, the type of attention people deliberately control when concentrating, holding information in mind, or ignoring distractions. Far fewer tasks examined exogenous attention, which is automatically drawn to external events such as a sudden sound or movement.All instorative experiments that assessed attention focused on deliberate, goal-directed attention. However, their number was too small to determine whether restorative and instorative effects differ between the two types of attention. The authors identify this as a question for future research.Authors’ ConclusionsThe authors conclude that nature’s potential to enhance functioning from a neutral baseline remains underexplored. Although only eight experiments were classified as instorative, all four that assessed cognition reported findings favoring natural environments, while four of six reported positive affective findings.According to the authors, these results indicate that nature exposure should not be studied only as a setting for recovery after stress or fatigue. Instoration may represent a separate process involving enhancement before depletion and potentially contributing to cognitive resilience. However, the available evidence is too limited to determine the strength, duration, or mechanisms of this process.The authors propose using “instoration” as a standardized term and recommend experiments that establish neutral baselines, use dedicated instruments to distinguish instoration from restoration, and directly compare different attention processes.Important limitations include the small number of instorative experiments, possible publication bias, substantial differences among study designs, and the predominance of young participants from Western populations. Many studies also involved brief laboratory exposures, limiting conclusions about longer-term experiences in everyday environments.Why the Distinction MattersTreating every positive result as “restoration” can hide an important difference: did nature exposure help participants recover after mental fatigue, or did measurable changes appear before fatigue occurred?Separating these two processes gives researchers a clearer way to study how natural environments relate to cognition. It also opens a new research direction focused on whether instoration contributes to cognitive resilience before stress occurs, a question future experiments will need to answer.The information in this article is provided for informational purposes only and is not medical advice. For medical advice, please consult your doctor.Reference:Prugger, J., & Kühn, S. (2026). The blind spot in research on nature’s benefits: Restorative versus instorative effects and potential biases. Journal of Environmental Psychology, 113, 103114. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jenvp.2026.103114The post Can Nature Build Cognitive Resilience Before Stress Hits? A New Review Investigates appeared first on CogniFit Blog: Brain Health News.