Study Shows How Seeing Nature Helps Brain Work Better
by Chris Mooney
While still relatively novel in the United States, so-called green roofs urban rooftops covered with grasses, plants and other types of greenery are becoming increasingly popular around the world. In France, newly built commercial rooftops must sport either greenery or solar panels, according to arecent law. Facebook, meanwhile, recently installed amassive 9-acre green roofat its office in Menlo Park, Calif.
The logic is obvious: Green roofs can reduce the retention of heat in urban areas, help to cool down buildings and thereby lower their energy use, and even pull some carbon dioxide from the air and feed it back into plant growth. Plus, they look cool.
But the psychological benefits of green roofs to busy office workers may also be substantial, according to new research. In a study published in the journal Environmental Psychology, the University of Melbourne’s Kate Lee and a group of colleagues found that interrupting a tedious, attention-demanding task with a 40-second microbreak in which one simply looks at a computerized image of a green roof improved focus as well as subsequent performance on the task.
The research adds to a growing scientific literature on the health advantages psychological and otherwise of being exposed to views of nature in urban settings, for instance through the presence of parks or trees. Research in this area is so far along, in fact, that researchers are considering whether it might be possible to identify the right dose of nature that people need to receive in order to actually reap significant health benefits.
Other psychological benefits of nature views have also been captured in recent literature. In one study, research subjects who viewed a12-minute nature documentary before playing a game that involved managing a fishery resource…
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