In 2008, 38 students at the University of Michigan unknowingly became test subjects. Half of them took a 2.8-mile stroll through the soothing greens of Nichols Arboretum, while the others dodged speed walkers in Ann Arbor’s downtown.
Afterward, both groups took a memory and attention test. The nature walkers saw their scores improve by nearly 20 percent compared to a mere blip of improvement in the urban crowd. Then they swapped routes—same result.
Psychologist Marc Berman, who ran the study, says that the results suggest that walking amongst the trees makes you more attentive.
This aligns with an idea called Attention Restoration Theory, which dates back to the 1980s when psychologists Rachel and Stephen Kaplan theorized that our attention span is a finite resource.
City life, with all its hustle and bustle, sights, and sounds, consumes a significant amount of our processing power. It’s like how Google Chrome chews up a lot of your computer’s processing power, slowing the whole thing down even when you’ve only got a couple of tabs open.
Nature, on the other hand, gives some of that lost attention span back to us. According to researchers who study the restoration of attention span, nature is “softly fascinating”—interesting, captivating, but not demanding.
It doesn’t consume as much processing power as a hectic big city. Perhaps that explains why so many people turn to the relaxing soundscape of nature to lull them to sleep.
Additionally, Berman argues that the curves and fractals found in natural environments are easier on the brain than the hard lines of buildings and roads. Our minds need a break from grey rectangles.
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The theory has its critics. Dr. Amy McDonnell, a researcher from the University of Utah, a state known for its majestic landscapes. Dr. McDonnell argues that the theory is a little “hand-wavy,” meaning it’s too simple an explanation for something that is much more complex and nuanced.
She ran her own study using EEG headgear to peer into people’s brain waves. After walking in nature, the study participants showed less brain activity at first, but then bigger spikes during cognitive tasks, suggesting that while a walk around in the woods offers some benefit, it is ultimately minimal and not indicative of a larger shift.
There are also several other variables to consider. The air quality in nature might help people think more clearly than when they’re choking down city exhaust. The solitude might help people feel a little more at ease. The simple act of getting up and moving around may also explain some of it.
So far, it seems that the consensus suggests nature certainly does help, but the degree to which it does is debatable and will likely require several additional studies before a more definitive consensus can be reached. Or maybe we’re all just overthinking it.
Maybe we can find solace in the fact that nature seems to do a decent job of clearing our overstimulated city-dweller brains and leave it at that.
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