Authors
Yixin Zhang, Kejin Ma, Tianxu Hu, Yongcan Ma, Hetao Zhao, Xin Peng, Gaosheng Yin, Huijia Zhang, Feng Lin, Yinan Pan, Tianci Zhang, Haoer Ban, Yufei Zhu, Tian Gao, Ling Qiu
Published in
Communications biology. Jul 14, 2026. Epub Jul 14, 2026.
Abstract
Chronic stress impairs behavior, neuroimmune regulation and gut microbial ecology, but whether natural-environment structure shapes recovery remains unclear. Here, we tested whether landscape design, beyond greenness alone, promotes recovery in chronically stressed male mice. During a 28-day recovery phase, mice were exposed to five parameterized vegetated landscapes differing in openness, canopy density and visual complexity, a matched urban-gray setting, or standard housing. Vegetated exposure improved anxiety-like behavior, behavioral despair and anhedonia, whereas the gray setting showed little benefit. Recovery was design-dependent: multistrata, color-rich landscapes produced the fastest and most sustained behavioral improvement, while open lawn-dominant layouts showed weaker, partly transient effects. These gains were accompanied by lower interleukin-1β and interleukin-6, normalized hippocampal Iba-1, preserved brain-derived neurotrophic factor, and restored gut microbial diversity. Predicted microbial functions linked butyrate-related pathways with neuroimmune-behavioral indices. These findings support vegetation structure as a tunable environmental variable for coordinated recovery after chronic stress.
PMID:
42443490
Bibliographic data and abstract were imported from PubMed on 14 Jul 2026.
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