{"status":"ok","message-type":"work","message-version":"1.0.0","message":{"indexed":{"date-parts":[[2026,9,18]],"date-time":"2026-09-18T12:08:54Z","timestamp":1789733334728,"version":"4.0.1"},"reference-count":50,"publisher":"Frontiers Media SA","license":[{"start":{"date-parts":[[2026,7,27]],"date-time":"2026-07-27T00:00:00Z","timestamp":1785110400000},"content-version":"vor","delay-in-days":0,"URL":"https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/4.0\/"}],"content-domain":{"domain":["frontiersin.org"],"crossmark-restriction":true},"short-container-title":["Front. Psychol."],"abstract":"<jats:sec>\n                    <jats:title>Introduction<\/jats:title>\n                    <jats:p>Exposure to natural and rural landscapes has been associated with stress reduction and psychological restoration. However, conventional photograph-based experiments often provide limited control over individual landscape elements and their positions within the visual field. This study examined whether depth-controlled, AI-generated rural landscape stimuli could support stress recovery and clarify how foreground and midground elements relate to landscape preference and EEG-based responses.<\/jats:p>\n                  <\/jats:sec>\n                  <jats:sec>\n                    <jats:title>Methods<\/jats:title>\n                    <jats:p>Depth estimation, layer masking, and FLUX-based image editing were used to construct 27 controlled rural landscape stimuli. Selected foreground and midground elements were modified while the background context was kept relatively stable. Thirty participants completed a stress-induction task followed by rural landscape viewing and a duration-matched blank-screen control condition. Systolic blood pressure, diastolic blood pressure, heart rate, EEG beta\/alpha (\u03b2\/\u03b1) stress index, and POMS mood scores were measured at baseline, after stress induction, and after recovery. Landscape preference ratings and image-level EEG responses were analyzed for the rural landscape stimuli.<\/jats:p>\n                  <\/jats:sec>\n                  <jats:sec>\n                    <jats:title>Results<\/jats:title>\n                    <jats:p>\n                      Compared with blank-screen viewing, rural landscape viewing produced significantly greater recovery in all seven stage-level outcomes after Holm correction. Rural-minus-blank recovery differences were \u22124.45 mmHg for systolic blood pressure, \u22123.93 mmHg for diastolic blood pressure, \u22125.85 bpm for heart rate, and \u22120.10 for the EEG \u03b2\/\u03b1 stress index. Within the rural landscape stimuli, foreground water was associated with higher preference ratings (estimate = 0.500, SE = 0.084,\n                      <jats:italic>p<\/jats:italic>\n                      \u202f&amp;lt;\u202f0.001), whereas foreground road was associated with lower preference (estimate = \u22120.354, SE = 0.084,\n                      <jats:italic>p<\/jats:italic>\n                      \u202f&amp;lt;\u202f0.001). EEG-based image-level associations were weaker. Foreground water and forest-based context were associated with lower \u03b2\/\u03b1 values in exploratory models, but the matched water-versus-road EEG contrast was not significant after correction.\n                    <\/jats:p>\n                  <\/jats:sec>\n                  <jats:sec>\n                    <jats:title>Discussion<\/jats:title>\n                    <jats:p>Validated AI-generated rural images can serve as controlled stimuli in environmental psychology research. The findings suggest that rural landscape viewing may promote stronger physiological, EEG-based, and affective recovery than passive blank-screen viewing, while visual preference and EEG-based restoration may follow partly distinct depth-layered pathways. Given the exploratory design, the depth-layer findings should be interpreted cautiously and require confirmation in more systematically balanced stimulus sets.<\/jats:p>\n                  <\/jats:sec>","DOI":"10.3389\/fpsyg.2026.1891123","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2026,7,27]],"date-time":"2026-07-27T04:25:29Z","timestamp":1785126329000},"update-policy":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.3389\/crossmark-policy","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":0,"title":["Foreground, midground, and restoration: EEG and preference responses to depth-controlled rural scenes"],"prefix":"10.3389","volume":"17","author":[{"given":"Xing","family":"Xiong","sequence":"first","affiliation":[{"name":"Department of Landscape Architecture, Nanjing Agricultural University","place":["Nanjing, China"]}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Shanrui","family":"Yang","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Department of Landscape Architecture, Nanjing Agricultural University","place":["Nanjing, China"]}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Xinyi","family":"Jiang","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Department of Landscape Architecture, Nanjing Agricultural University","place":["Nanjing, China"]}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Qinghai","family":"Zhang","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Department of Landscape Architecture, Nanjing Agricultural University","place":["Nanjing, China"]}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]}],"member":"1965","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2026,7,27]]},"reference":[{"key":"ref1","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"1527691","DOI":"10.3389\/fpsyg.2025.1527691","article-title":"Postural correlates of pleasant landscapes visual perception","volume":"16","author":"Akounach","year":"2025","journal-title":"Front. 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