Neuroscience

Mental illness

Prefrontal cortex

Clinical psychology

Biology

Mental health

Psychiatry

Cognition

Psychology

Rumination

Ecology

Urbanization

Environmental enrichment

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences

Significance More than 50% of people now live in urban areas. By 2050 this proportion will be 70%. Urbanization is associated with increased levels of mental illness, but it’s not yet clear why. Through a controlled experiment, we investigated whether nature experience would influence rumination (repetitive thought focused on negative aspects of the self), a known risk factor for mental illness. Participants who went on a 90-min walk through a natural environment reported lower levels of rumination and showed reduced neural activity in an area of the brain linked to risk for mental illness compared with those who walked through an urban environment. These results suggest that accessible natural areas may be vital for mental health in our rapidly urbanizing world.

Nature experience reduces rumination and subgenual prefrontal cortex activation