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Improving Academic Engagement And Achievement Over Time Video

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When we get closer to nature—be it untouched wilderness or a backyard tree—we do our overstressed brains a favor. When you head out to the desert, David Strayer is the kind of man you want behind the wheel. He never texts or talks on the phone while driving. Among other things, his research has shown that using a cell phone impairs most drivers as much as drinking alcohol does. Strayer is in a unique position to understand what modern life does to us. An avid backpacker, he thinks he knows the antidote: Nature. When we slow down, stop the busywork, and take in beautiful natural surroundings, not only do we feel restored, but our mental performance improves too. Strayer has demonstrated as much with a group of Outward Bound participants, who performed 50 percent better on creative problem-solving tasks after three days of wilderness backpacking. The early evening sun has saturated the red canyon walls; the group is mellow and hungry in that satisfying, Improving Academic Engagement And Achievement Over Time way.

Strayer, in a rumpled T-shirt and with a slight sunburn, is definitely looking relaxed.

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They suction-cup another 6 electrodes to my face. Feeling like a beached sea urchin, I walk carefully to a grassy bank along the San Juan River for ten minutes of restful contemplation. In the great landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted looked out over the Yosemite Valley and saw a place worth saving.

He urged the California legislature to protect it from rampant development. Olmsted had already designed Central Park in New York City; he was convinced that beautiful green spaces should exist for all people to enjoy.

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Olmsted was exaggerating; his claim was based less on science than on intuition. But it was an intuition with a long history. It went back at least to Cyrus the Great, who some 2, years ago here gardens for relaxation in the busy capital of Persia. Motivated by large-scale public health problems such as obesity, depression, and pervasive nearsightedness, all clearly associated with time spent indoors, Strayer and other scientists are looking with renewed interest at how nature affects our brains and bodies.

In England researchers from the University of Exeter Medical School recently analyzed mental health data from 10, city dwellers and used high-resolution mapping to track where the subjects had lived over 18 years.

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They found that people living near more green space reported less mental distress, even after adjusting for income, education, and employment all of which are also correlated with health. In a team of Dutch researchers found a lower incidence of 15 diseases—including depression, anxiety, heart disease, diabetes, asthma, and migraines—in people who lived within about a half mile of green space. And in an international team overlaid health questionnaire responses from more than 31, Toronto residents onto a map of the city, block by block.

Lower mortality and fewer stress hormones circulating in the blood have also been connected to living close to green space. Is it the fresh air? Do certain colors or fractal shapes trigger neurochemicals in our visual cortex?

Or is it just that people in greener neighborhoods use the parks to exercise more? Moreover, the lowest income people seemed to gain the most: In the city, Mitchell found, being close to nature is a social leveler.]