Go outside – it’s good for your brain

We humans are almost perfectly designed to communicate with nature. We are the most adaptable creatures on the planet, capable of successfully operating and surviving almost anywhere on Earth. Isn’t it unfortunate then that the average person is getting better at avoiding nature?

I ask because we are in my favorite time to be outdoors. Having grown up in the countryside, this is now at the heart of harvest time, when I particularly appreciate nature and its bounty. There’s a reason we call it the “big nature”.

It’s a great time to reconnect with your surroundings – to walk through that door into the garden, forest, mountain, beach or swamp to remind yourself that everything you do naturally is good at, designed to assist you in your dealings with the natural world.

Our brains are designed to be out there

Our brains are designed to support us out there, not in the totally artificial cave we call home or the office. Interiors have been designed to offer a less challenging existence in an environment where every step is safe, the climate is constant, food is available and safety is assured.

In these unnatural environments, we spend hours each day sitting on our keisters, confining our visual and auditory experiences to what magically appears on a small, flat, rectangular surface directly in front of us. Our bodily movements consist primarily of fast finger taps on a screen or keyboard. These screens are the entrance for each person to experience their own unique world. meta indeed. Why bother with the real world when a fake can be so captivating that we need to get messages off our watches and phones to remind us to get up every once in a while?

Like me, you may have noticed that the world’s citizens are not getting noticeably smarter or nicer. You may have noticed that many people in this metaworld are content in their selfish isolation, but are not necessarily very happy companions.

It was interesting to read a recent report from the UK’s Prince’s Trust which concluded that young media heavy users are just as happy as the rest of us. They were essentially asked to rate their own happiness. They gave themselves pretty good grades, comparable to how the rest of us would judge our luck.

About a thousand other research questions could have been asked that would better show how well adolescents are living their lives. Ask administrators, teachers, and psychologists in average-sized school districts how much media use ranks in their middle or high school classes. Perhaps her considerable detachment from a more physical and natural life is not so wonderful in everyone’s professional opinion.

So my appeal to you, my dear readers, is to give up your small screens and those sterile boxes you live in and get out of this chair and use these glorious harvest months to commune with Mother Nature again. She is a great lady, full of joys and surprises.

And when you’re out there in the woods and fields and dirt and rocks and grass and bushes and trees and water, really connect with that outside world. This is exactly what your neurology was designed for.

Nature as brain food

There’s a very good reason why Native Americans with traditional hunter-gatherer lives are so much more deeply and emotionally connected to their physical surroundings than most of us. It’s a part of them that, by their neurological nature, is designed to sustain them through their actions. It should be a part of you.

Buddhists use the concept of mindfulness to explain this moment-to-moment concentration of focus that connects us to this world. We are designed by nature to construct a detailed model of our world and, against the backdrop of that model, to constantly focus and respond to any detail that doesn’t fit. For the brain, the happy surprise is a positive event that changes the brain. It lightens the mood for a moment. It wields brain machinery that controls our brightness and our ability to increase our powers through brain plasticity. The fascination of nature enables new learning. It’s lastingly inspiring. It’s brain food.

nature and brain chemistry

I was reminded of these neurological processes when I read the results of another much-cited scientific report last week, which showed that serotonin levels in the brains of depressed individuals were not very different from those in the brains of non-depressed individuals — even with the main drug , which is used in most parts of the world to treat major depressive disorders, is specifically designed to increase circulating (blood and brain) levels of serotonin by blocking its natural breakdown in brain tissue. If serotonin levels are about the same regardless of whether a person is depressed or not, how could we possibly explain the fact that about two-thirds of those taking this drug are slowly “coming out” of their depression?

It turns out that slightly higher levels of serotonin in the brain elevate mood enough that many depressed people get out of that chair, out the door, and out into the world, where they’re challenged with surprises that outshine all those small screens do not deliver. At the same time, the production of a second neurotransmitter – norepinephrine – slowly increases. If you’re lucky, this increase in norepinephrine production correspondingly – and ultimately permanently – increases your “brightness” enough that you can now operate on a more effective scale. While this is hardly a “cure,” it can make a tremendous difference in a life because it brings that person back into the real world where there are many surprises.

Scientists have shown that by training their brains on a computer, using tools that activate this surprise-recognition machinery in the brain, people with drug-resistant depression can improve just as much as others can improve by taking the best drug available.

Sharpen your senses

Turns out there’s another way to train this machinery in your everyday life. Get out there and look for fun and surprises in your natural world – as a habit. be alert. Really connect. Never leave out an interesting bug, or a lizard, or a rock, or a flower, or a tree, or a bird, or a fellow human being, without trying to understand where they fit into your world. Be continuously engaged and focused – with all your senses.

Sharpening your senses will sharpen you.

I spend about half of my time outside of this season. My garden, my orchard and my tiny vineyard are full of surprises.

Frequent long walks around town and in city parks and surrounding beaches are another opportunity to connect with our natural mother. I particularly enjoy the mornings and early evenings when the diurnal creatures stir – and the darkness when the nocturnal creatures shyly emerge and forage for their daily food. i am one of them I dream that they could start believing that they are one of me.

Michael Merzenich, PhD, is often credited with discovering lifelong plasticity, he was the first to harness plasticity for human benefit (in his co-invention of the cochlear implant), and he pioneered the field of plasticity-based computer-assisted brain exercises. He is Professor Emeritus at UCSF and a Kavli Awardee in Neuroscience, and has been honored by each of the US National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. He is perhaps best known for a series of specials on public television about the brain. His current focus is on BrainHQ, a brain training app.

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