Nature-Made Mental Makeovers

A fast-paced lifestyle and stress are common mental zappers, but did you know we may actually be able to restore our minds and bodies just by turning to mother nature?

A recent study in Psychological Science from the University of Michigan compared memory and attention in adults who interacted with nature versus urban settings. Psychologists Marc G. Berman, John Jonides, and Stephen Kaplan headed up the study, which had two groups of volunteers complete mentally challenging tasks before and after a restorative walk. One group took a walk in a scenic park, while the other group walked in downtown Ann Arbor.

To further test the effects of nature on the mind, volunteers were then asked to view either photographs of nature or photographs of urban scenes before and after performing the same mental test.

Researchers found that the memory and attention test scores of the group that took the walk in the park greatly improved, but test scores did not improve for volunteers who had taken a walk downtown. And perhaps even more interesting is the fact that the group who viewed the nature photographs performed much better on the retesting than those who had viewed the urban scenes.

This suggests that urban settings provide relatively complex or confusing stimuli that require more effort to sort out and interpret. While natural environments offer more coherent, visually pleasing stimuli, which allow us to replenish our cognitive abilities. By spending a little time in nature, we may be able to improve our memory, attention, and focus and therefore cope better with the demands of daily life.