How Nature & Other Physical Environments Impact Your Focus, Cognition & Health | Dr. Marc Berman

**Andrew Huberman** (0:00)
Welcome to the Huberman Lab Podcast, where we discuss science and science-based tools for everyday life.
I'm Andrew Huberman, and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine. My guest today is Dr. Marc Berman. Dr. Marc Berman is a professor of psychology at the University of Chicago, where he directs the Environmental Neuroscience Laboratory. His research focuses on how our physical environments, particularly natural environments, impact our brain function, mental health and cognitive performance. During today's episode, we discussed the fascinating and actionable science of how your physical surroundings indoors, and in particular, your relationship and interactions with nature can shape your biology and your cognitive abilities. Dr. Berman explains how exposure to very common features in nature, such as fractal patterns, increase your ability to focus, reduce your stress and improve your mental and physical health metrics. And not just while you're in nature, but after you return indoors for many hours and even days afterwards. During today's episode, you'll learn about something called attention restoration theory, which turns out to be very important for understanding how different types of indoor and outdoor environments either deplete or restore your cognitive resources. We also discuss practical science based strategies that anyone can implement regardless of where you live. So if you're in an apartment or a house, if you have ready access to nature, if you don't, today's episode explains how to design your indoor space, the optimal duration and timing of nature exposure and the specific visual and auditory elements that will provide you with the greatest cognitive and health benefits. So whether you're a student or a professional looking to enhance your learning capacity, focus and reduce your burnout, or you're simply interested in optimizing your mental and physical health through exposure to different elements of nature, today's episode provides clear, actionable protocols based on rigorous scientific research. By the end of today's episode, you'll have a toolkit of evidence based strategies that will transform your relationship with your indoor environment and outdoor environments, and you'll learn to harness those to improve your brain and body. Before we begin, I'd like to emphasize that this podcast is separate from my teaching and research roles at Stanford. It is, however, part of my desire and effort to bring zero cost to consumer information about science and science-related tools to the general public. In keeping with that theme, today's episode does include sponsors. And now for my discussion with Dr. Marc Berman. Dr. Marc Berman, welcome.

**Marc Berman** (2:17)
Great to be here, Andrew.

**Andrew Huberman** (2:19)
I love being out in nature, so I'm excited about today's conversation, which is taking place indoors, but we're going to talk about the relationship between the mind, the brain, nature, stress, rumination, and this incredible power that interactions with the natural world can have on our brain. As we wade into this, I'd like to start with this issue of recapturing our attentional abilities, because I think nowadays everybody, whether they're clinically diagnosed with ADHD or they are just a human being on the planet, it feels as if their attention is being pulled in different directions, sometimes without our awareness, sometimes without our awareness. What is this notion of recapturing attention?

**Marc Berman** (3:04)
Yeah, I think it's a really fundamental concept. And we think that attention, you know, maybe on the surface of it, people just kind of think about, oh, it's kids trying to pay attention in school, or, oh, it's trying to pay attention at work. But it's actually deeper than that. We kind of think that elements of attention are sort of involved in controlling all of our behaviors. And when our attention is depleted, we don't have as much impulse control, we might behave more aggressively, you know, we may not be able to achieve our goals.
And with a lot of things in the modern world, our attention is just being fatigued, and we're depleted. And it's really hard to recharge the battery, or know what to do to recharge the battery. And I think that's kind of the entry point why I sort of got into interested in this and one of my mentors, Steve Kaplan, would talk about this directed attention fatigue problem that a lot of us are facing. You know, our ancestors, you know, thousands and thousands of years ago, were not bombarded with so much information like we are now. Now, the modern human has to sort of pick and choose what to pay attention to and it's kind of overwhelming. And Steve Kaplan had this idea that humans kind of have two different kinds of attention. So one kind of attention is called directed attention and that's kind of the attention that I've been talking about just recently here. And that's the kind of attention where you as the individual person are deciding what to pay attention to. So presumably, Andrew, you're deciding to pay attention to what I'm saying. Even though there's many other things you could find that might be more inherently interesting than what I'm saying. And this is kind of a very, you know, unique human capability. There might be other species that can kind of decide what to pay attention to, but we're really good at it. Humans are really, really good at being able to like focus on this lecture or focus on reading this paper or focus on trying to finish this math problem. But we can't do it forever. And I think everybody kind of has had that sensation where at the end of a long workday, maybe three or four o'clock, you might be just staring at the computer screen and you can't focus anymore. And we call that a directed attention fatigue state where you can't really control your attentional focus anymore. And I see this all the time when I'm lecturing at the University of Chicago and I think I'm a decent lecturer. First five minutes of class, all the students' eyes are on me, they're engaged. I see they're nodding along with me. And 45 minutes into my lecture, I kind of see people nodding back like this. They're getting tired. It's just hard for people to direct their attention for long periods of time. So that's kind of the special attention, directed attention. We think there's this other kind of attention that we call involuntary attention. And that's the kind of attention that's automatically captured by interesting stimulation in the environment. So bright lights, loud noises, those things automatically capture our attention, and we don't really have much control over it. And we think that kind of attention, this involuntary attention, is less susceptible to fatigue or depletion. So you don't often hear people say, oh, I can't look at that beautiful waterfall anymore. It's just too interesting. I got to step away. Or oh, I have to stop watching this movie. It's just too interesting. I'm too tired out. So that's a different kind of attention. And we think what's happening in modern times is that our directed attention is being fatigued.