Can Trees Heal You? – World Sensorium / Conservancy
Sonja Sudimac grew up immersed in nature. Belgrade, Serbia, where she is from, is packed with lush forested parks and bordered by the mighty Danube and Sava Rivers. But when Sudimac traveled in Europe and the United States as an adult, she realized many cities lacked the trees and waters of her childhood. Now an environmental neuroscience researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development in Berlin, Sudimac was curious how exposure to nature shapes the brain.
Over the past decade, scientists have published a substantive body of research that suggests nature enhances working memory, regulates our emotions, increases self-reliance, and fosters creativity. Yet most of these studies rely on participants’ subjective reports about their feelings after exposure. Sudimac and fellow researchers Simone Kühn and Vera Scale wanted to see if there was a causal connection between nature and well-being. “You can’t fake the results you get from the brain,” says Sudimac.
In 2022, the trio of researchers published the results of an experiment they ran in Berlin, looking at how a walk alone in the woods versus a stroll in the city affects activity in the amygdala. The part of the brain linked to fear, anxiety, and other emotions, the amygdala is typically monitored with magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) machines. A previous study had shown that the amygdala is more activated during a stressful task among city residents than among country residents, but no study had examined the brain before and after a person took a walk in a natural versus urban environment.
