Shankar Vedantam

She looked at them as she drank her coffee.

Many of us will experience losses and setbacks.

We'll say goodbye to people we adore and to jobs we love.

We'll face illness and injury.

One thing many of us forget during such times is the solace offered by the natural world.

At the University of Chicago, Mark Berman studies our relationship to nature.

He joined us some time ago on an episode titled, How Nature Heals Us.

If you missed it, you can find that episode in this podcast feed or at hiddenbrain.org.

Today, Mark returns to the show to respond to some of the hundreds of stories and questions we received.

Mark Berman, welcome back to Hidden Brain.

Mark, many listeners wrote in to share the benefits that nature has had on their minds.

Can you remind us of what the researchers found about how nature affects us psychologically and emotionally?

I think the most common theme we heard from listeners is that nature helps them calm down when they're feeling anxious or overwhelmed.

We heard from a listener named Jennifer who says that when she's stressed out, she visits the bees who love the flowers in her backyard.

So Mark, there were a series of studies done in the 1980s and 90s that looked at how nature can affect us when we are feeling stressed out.

Those studies had a great influence on you.

What did the research find?

I'd like to circle back to something you mentioned earlier, that spending time in nature can improve our attention.

You've done some research on this, Mark.

Tell me about that.