How Nature Affects the Brain

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August 27, 2011

a project of CharityFocus

The softest, freest, most pliable and changeful living substance is the brain -- the hardest and most iron-bound as well.

- Charlotte Perkins Gilman, 1903 -

How Nature Affects the Brain

"For the first time in three days in the wilderness, Todd Braver is not wearing his watch. "I forgot," he says. It is a small thing, the kind of change many vacationers notice in themselves as they unwind and lose track of time. But for Braver and his companions, these moments lead to a question: What is happening to our brains? Braver, a psychology professor at Washington University in St. Louis, was one of five neuroscientists on an unusual journey. They spent a week in late May in this remote area of southern Utah, rafting the San Juan River, camping on the soft banks and hiking the tributary canyons. It was a primitive trip with a sophisticated goal: to understand how heavy use of digital devices and other technology changes how we think and behave, and how a retreat into nature might reverse those effects." { read more }