How Walking in Nature Changes the Brain
Geege Schuman stashed this in Neuroscience
Stashed in: Outdoors, Fitspo, Brain, Standing, Palo Alto, Nature!, Out of Doors, Depression
Neurological mechanisms underlie the effects of being outside in nature:
So for the new study, which was published last week in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Mr. Bratman and his collaborators decided to closely scrutinize what effect a walk might have on a person’s tendency to brood.
Brooding, which is known among cognitive scientists as morbid rumination, is a mental state familiar to most of us, in which we can’t seem to stop chewing over the ways in which things are wrong with ourselves and our lives. This broken-record fretting is not healthy or helpful. It can be a precursor to depression and is disproportionately common among city dwellers compared with people living outside urban areas, studies show.
Perhaps most interesting for the purposes of Mr. Bratman and his colleagues, however, such rumination also is strongly associated with increased activity in a portion of the brain known as the subgenual prefrontal cortex.
"Is it the greenery, quiet, sunniness, loamy smells, all of those, or something else that lifts our moods?"
As might have been expected, walking along the highway had not soothed people’s minds.
Blood flow to their subgenual prefrontal cortex was still high and their broodiness scores were unchanged.
But the volunteers who had strolled along the quiet, tree-lined paths showed slight but meaningful improvements in their mental health, according to their scores on the questionnaire. They were not dwelling on the negative aspects of their lives as much as they had been before the walk.
They also had less blood flow to the subgenual prefrontal cortex. That portion of their brains were quieter.
These results “strongly suggest that getting out into natural environments” could be an easy and almost immediate way to improve moods for city dwellers, Mr. Bratman said.
Just looking at nature can help your brain work better.
http://pandawhale.com/post/63941/just-looking-at-nature-can-help-your-brain-work-better
11:32 PM Jul 22 2015