Sudimac Sonja, Kühn Simone
Max Planck Institute for Human Development, Center for Environmental Neuroscience, Lentzeallee 94, 14195, Berlin, Germany.
Max Planck Institute for Human Development, Center for Environmental Neuroscience, Lentzeallee 94, 14195, Berlin, Germany; University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf, Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, Martinistr. 52, 20251, Hamburg, Germany; Max Planck UCL Centre for Computational Psychiatry and Ageing Research Berlin, Germany and London, UK, Lentzeallee 94, 14195, Berlin, Germany.
Environ Res. 2024 Dec 1;262(Pt 1):119813. doi: 10.1016/j.envres.2024.119813. Epub 2024 Aug 16.
In cities, the incidence of mental disorders is higher, while visits to nature have been reported to benefit mental health and brain function. However, there is a lack of knowledge about how exposure to natural and urban environments affects brain structure. To explore the causal relationship between exposure to these environments and the hippocampal formation, 60 participants were sent on a one hour walk in either a natural (forest) or an urban environment (busy street), and high-resolution hippocampal imaging was performed before and after the walks. We found that the participants who walked in the forest had an increase in subiculum volume, a hippocampal subfield involved in stress response inhibition, while no change was observed after the urban walk. However, this result did not withstand Bonferroni correction for multiple comparisons. Furthermore, the increase in subiculum volume after the forest walk was associated with a decrease in self-reported rumination. These results indicate that visits to nature can lead to observable alterations in brain structure, with potential benefits for mental health and implications for public health and urban planning policies.
在城市中，精神障碍的发病率较高，而据报道，接触自然对心理健康和大脑功能有益。然而，对于接触自然环境和城市环境如何影响大脑结构，我们还缺乏了解。为了探究接触这些环境与海马结构之间的因果关系，我们让60名参与者分别在自然环境（森林）或城市环境（繁忙街道）中进行了一小时的散步，并在散步前后对海马进行了高分辨率成像。我们发现，在森林中散步的参与者其海马旁回体积增加，海马旁回是海马体的一个子区域，参与应激反应抑制，而在城市中散步后未观察到变化。然而，这一结果在进行多重比较的Bonferroni校正后并不成立。此外，森林散步后海马旁回体积的增加与自我报告的沉思减少有关。这些结果表明，接触自然可以导致大脑结构发生可观察到的变化，对心理健康具有潜在益处，并对公共卫生和城市规划政策具有启示意义。
