Site icon Aging Topic: Aging in Place Blog for Seniors

Vitamin N for Nature: lights up your brain… Literally.

You may find this fascinating (as I do) but the link below has a video where Dr. Hartman-Stein talks about neurobiological studies done by a group where they perform PET scans on people, and when they show them beautiful images of nature versus cars or buildings while in the scanner, different parts of their brain light up.

The results prove that we have some nerves connecting our visual cortex to the hippocampus which has to do with memory. And along this neural pathway are little sites of opiates.. the feel-good chemicals that people get…  so when you are in a beautiful Azalea garden you can feel incredibly happy even if you are not totally aware of of your surroundings, because things are happening sort of unconsciously, in terms of your brain.

When you explore HERE about the correlation of increased positivity and calm from being outside, you may have a more dedicated determination to spend at least a little more time with Nature than you do currently for your own well being!

 

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