Michigan Minds: How Nature Helps Brain Recharge

Juan Ochoa

Welcome to the Michigan Minds podcast, where we explore the wealth of knowledge from faculty experts at the University of Michigan. I am Juan Ochoa, international public relations representative for the Michigan News Office. I'm pleased to welcome Doctor Hala Darwish, associate professor at the University of Michigan School of Nursing and Department of Neurology at Michigan Medicine, and assistant dean for community culture at the School of Nursing.

Juan Ochoa

Doctor Darwish is a neuroscientist whose work integrates neuroscience, mental health and nursing with a particular focus on cognitive and effective functioning among people living with neurologic and psychiatric conditions. She explores innovative solutions for cognitive impairment, mood disorders, and health disparities. Welcome, Doctor Darwish.

Hala Darwish

Thank you for having me today.

Juan Ochoa

In a recent interview with Scotts Miracle-Gro, you noted that as humans, we have a primal need to connect with nature. However, for many people, whether living with severe illness, mobility limitations, or in underserved urban neighborhoods, access to green spaces is severely restricted. Today, we are exploring how nature impacts our brain and mental health, how urban planning creates environmental disparities, and how innovative technology like nature based virtual reality, can help bring the restorative power of the outdoors to those who need it the most.

Juan Ochoa

With that said, why are green spaces like gardens, parks, or even tree lined street so important for our mental health?

Hala Darwish

Yeah, that's a great question Juan. I think we sometimes underestimate how much our surroundings affect us and affect how we feel and how well we think. Well, we talk more about sleep, exercise and social connection and relationships, but the environment where we spend our day also matters. Think about how much we ask of our attention on a daily basis.

Hala Darwish

So we're constantly responding to so many stimuli, making decisions, looking at screens, watching all these super short 30s or less videos and receiving alerts. This is all depleting our attention. So but when we are in a garden, our attention can settle on like a movement of leaves or the sound of water, without having to work that hard.

Hala Darwish

So that's one explanation of how nature can help us recover from attention, fatigue or mental fatigue and restore our attention. Nature is fascinating innately, and there is a lot of power in awe and a lot of psychology on studying awe in general. And then there is another explanation. Nature can help us slow down after stress. A lot of research supports this.

Hala Darwish

So in a number of experiments and more recent ones, people who walked in nature report reported less rumination. Rumination is that repetitive thinking where we keep going over and over the same worries. Researchers found a change in the activity in one brain region associated with that process. So this connects to my work because cognition and emotional health are very closely related.

Hala Darwish

When we are distressed, concentration becomes harder. And we also when we are mentally exhausted. So managing our emotions also becomes harder. So what I find very encouraging is that nature can be part of our ordinary life a garden, a neighborhood park, trees along our street. Those everyday opportunities deserve much more attention.

Juan Ochoa

But what is it about nature that helps our brain in that way? Is it because we're supposed to be living out in the woods, for example, as opposed to a structure?

Hala Darwish

Well, there's definitely a aspect to things, but nature by itself in general is very fascinating. Whether it is the mountains or a beach horizon, the sounds of nature also are very soothing. So yeah, it can be that connecting us to some of our primitive brain that is, that has evolved over time and more urban settings. Yeah. That we connect to probably biologically.

Juan Ochoa

A lot of your research relates to patients with multiple sclerosis and addresses people who can't easily get outside. But who else in our society is cut off from nature in ways we don't always think about? And what are the mental health consequences because of that?

Hala Darwish

The people we immediately think of are those with mobility limitations. But once we start looking at access more carefully the group, this group becomes way much larger. So if we think about someone in a hospital or a long term care facility, they are secluded away from nature, a caregiver who can't leave the person they are carrying, someone working two jobs who has very little time during daylight hours, children whose families don't feel that it's safe for them to play outside.

Hala Darwish

Even someone living near a park may not have an accessible path to get to it, or a place to sit or transportation to get there, and there's plenty of mental health consequences that deserve our attention. So when people have fewer opportunities to experience nature, they lose an important way to recover from stress and mental fatigue and reboot that we described earlier.

Hala Darwish

So there may be fewer opportunities to interrupt that rumination or that repetitive negative thoughts and enjoy physical activity, and that can contribute to further loneliness, more anxiety and depressive symptoms. There is a large study that followed millions of adults in Wales, in the UK, that found that greater surrounding greenery and better access to green and blue spaces where associated with lower levels, and the probability of anxiety and depression.

Hala Darwish

So that does not mean that limited access to nature alone will cause these conditions. But it does show that our surroundings matter. That becomes a vicious cycle to depression itself. Can make leaving the house feel overwhelming. Also, people with MS have to consider fatigue heat sensitivity, so being physically able to walk does not necessarily mean that an outdoor walk is manageable that day.

Hala Darwish

For people with depression and particularly or other chronic illnesses like MS, you may lose several things at once. So opportunity opportunities to recover from stress, move, connect with others and enjoy something outside the demands of illness or daily life. All these losses combined can contribute to additional isolation and distress. For us living in Michigan. That means a very long, harsh winter that can also be limiting.

Hala Darwish

And even those like me who enjoy winter nature may not be able to afford the gear that is necessary to protect us from the cold and freeze, to either enjoy a walk in the park or even in the neighborhood. And so, as a nurse, I want to understand what a recommendation actually requires of someone. So before I tell someone, spend more time outside, I need to ask is it possible for you?

Juan Ochoa

Research shows that parks in lower income neighborhoods are consistently smaller, hotter, and more polluted than parks in wealthy areas. When we talk about who gets access to nature. What role do you think city planning decisions play in creating those disparities?

Hala Darwish

Yeah. City planning plays a very direct role. Decisions about where to build roads, where to plant the trees, how to maintain the parks, and whether sidewalks are accessible all shapes someone's opportunity to benefit from nature. Now, we're very lucky in an armor. Our city name itself has a tree in it, but that is not the case for many cities.

Hala Darwish

Having a park nearby is is only the beginning. Can you get there safely? Is there shade? Is it well maintained with places? Where are there places to sit if you are tired? Would you feel comfortable taking your children or other family members there or going there on your own? So a recent study across 24 large urban areas in the US actually found that parks in less privileged neighborhoods tended to have worse environmental conditions.

Hala Darwish

So we have to look beyond counting parks and ask what people actually experience when they use them. And then our study that we conducted with of more than 2,000 older adults, Mexican-American adults, also made me think about this. We examined different types of surrounding environments. So an additional analysis, we found that women living in greener environments, Mexican older women living in greening greener environments had better cognitive scores than those women in the and other environments combined.

Hala Darwish

This was, of course, an association. And of course it does not establish that greenery causes the difference. But it raised an important question about how we bring nature into the places where people already live. And for me, good planning or city planning means accessible greenery or blue water areas, emphasizing the services and resources people need and and involving the residents in those decisions from the beginning.

Juan Ochoa

A lot of these disparities trace back to historic practices like redlining, where certain neighborhoods were systematically denied investment, including parks and trees. How do these decades old decisions still show up in the health of people living in those neighborhoods today?

Hala Darwish

Yeah, those the decisions remain part of our daily environment, unfortunately, and long after the policy itself has ended, trees take decades to grow. Roads, housing distributions and industrial settings and developments shaped the neighborhoods for decades. Redlining was one part of a larger history of discrimination and unequal investment then across many U.S. cities. Research A lot of research found that historically redlined neighborhoods have higher surface temperatures today.

Hala Darwish

This shows how past policies linger, leaving a physical footprint and health consequences. In Detroit, our U-M researchers have examined who benefited from the green infrastructure intended to reduce heat. In this 2019, the study found green roofs were more common in wealthier neighborhoods, while low income residents lived outside areas designated for future green neighborhoods. So from a health perspective, we need to think about what those conditions mean in the future.

Hala Darwish

More exposure to it, more difficult difficulty finding a comfortable place outdoors, and more financial pressure to keep the inside of the home cool. This leads to isolation and physical and mental pressures that we've discussed. All these burdens accumulate, but I would not attribute every health disparity in the Southeast Michigan region or the Detroit area to redlining alone. Yet we need to recognize how these historical and current decisions work and affect us, right?

Juan Ochoa

At one time, Detroit was the Paris of the Midwest. So I think there's that space where people if you own a home, you can just plant a tree and, you know, improve your your neighborhood. Yes. Continuing in your research, participants wear a virtual reality headset, the kind that covers your eyes and shows you a 3D environment. And they take what you call a virtual nature.

Juan Ochoa

What? For someone who has never tried virtual reality, what does that actually feel like? And does your brain genuinely respond as if you were really out in nature?

Hala Darwish

Yeah, this is an excellent question. So imagine if you are sitting in your home putting on a headset that looks like a goggles, large goggles, and you get immediately transported into a green forest or the shores of Bora Bora, so instead of being in your room, you are now in a natural landscape. You can move your head up and down, look right and left.

Hala Darwish

You can see the skies, walk around or sit still. You can enjoy the scenery, hear the sounds of nature, the waves or the birds singing or chirping. It will give a sense of being in that place. In our work, we ask that this experience be done while seated, which matters for people with disabilities or motion. Possible motion.

Hala Darwish

Motion sickness and limits the concerns about falling. And we refer to that feeling as presence. It is the sense of being there. Now you still know you are wearing the headset, but the experience engages your attention and emotions. Just think about how your emotions and body respond during a movie. You know that it is a film, but you are still moved.

Hala Darwish

The VR can make that sense of involvement even stronger. So yes, a VR experience can produce a response and the research suggests that VR nature can improve short term mood and reduce stress and anxiety. But I would I would be careful about saying that the brain is responding exactly as it does outdoors, although this needs more research.

Hala Darwish

And I recently heard that anecdotal of one person from one of our participants with MS in this ongoing study who is very sensitive to heat as MS patients usually are, that being in that virtual sunny environment at the beach actually triggered their MS symptoms, but that is yet to be explored further with, of course, more people. So we haven't established equivalence yet between the virtual and real.

Hala Darwish

Right now, we're exploring feasibility and whether repeated experiences at home or in the clinic are practical, comfortable and helpful for the depressive symptoms. But equivalence is an important question to explore in the future.

Juan Ochoa

It's interesting that that MS patient had a had an event that was triggered by it, but if this works for others, what does it mean for how we think about mental health treatment more broadly? Are we moving toward a future where prescriptions for nature, real or virtual, become standard practice?

Hala Darwish

Yeah, I actually think that nature started to become a more intentional part of how we support mental health. Nature prescription programs already exist. Scotland is an example. Physicians were prescribing nature a walk in nature for 90 minutes, and the reviews suggest benefits for depression and anxiety. Symptoms still have a lot of work to do on how best to deliver them and who benefits most.

Hala Darwish

For me, the bigger change is starting to ask about someone's environment as part of care. Where do you spend your day? Do you have some somewhere you can feel comfortable and take a break? What helps you feel connected? And a prescription has to be usable. So if I recommend a garden visit to someone who has no transportation or needs assistance getting outside, I also need to help address that barrier.

Hala Darwish

So our research is exploring whether we are nature could provide another option. We are studying it and the progress of MS as we discussed, or also in people undergoing recovery, treatment for substance or alcohol use disorder out and outpatient clinics to address their depressive symptoms. We want to understand what it can contribute alongside the care people are already receiving.

Hala Darwish

So I would like us to reach a point where we can match the approach to the person. So outdoor access where possible and adapted experience where and when needed, and also follow up to see whether it is helping over time.

Juan Ochoa

So for those who don't have access to these headsets and they want to do something at home with these winter months coming, can we just maybe sit in front of our TV with videos of nature playing? And could that help as well?

Hala Darwish

Yeah, there are there are some studies that showed that that just looking at pictures, even just a hard copy picture of nature can help or art. There is a lot of comparative work that needs to be done yet in research to see how equivalent just looking at a, at a, at the screen versus VR versus real. But that definitely is an alternative.

Juan Ochoa

Interesting. My final question is what are the biggest unknowns? Could virtual nature ever replace the real thing or is it strictly a supplement?

Hala Darwish

I personally don't want to see VR nature replace real nature experiences, but I want an alternative when that is impossible. Also, my biggest question is whether the benefits are almost equal and lasting. So feeling calmer during a session is very valuable, but does that translate into less depression and better functioning over weeks and months? Novelty is a thing so and we humans habituate really fast.

Hala Darwish

I want to keep that in mind going forward. And we also need to understand how often people should use it and which environments they prefer. I, I like beaches, not everybody like beaches. Some people prefer forest. And who benefits most from these experiences? And we all we need all these comparisons also that we discussed and and how much is coming from the nature content, how much is coming from the immersion and how much from simply taking a break.

Hala Darwish

There are also practical questions to some people experience dizziness or nausea and the VR and as you said, headsets cost money. So and people may need may need help using them also. So an intervention intended to improve access has to account for all of these barriers to. So I see the VR as an additional option as an adjunct, as a complimentary being outdoors offer movement, daylight, physical sensations, social connection that I had said does not fully reproduce.

Hala Darwish

At the same time, for someone who cannot go outside the realistic choice that they may be the virtual nature, and that is definitely better than no nature experience at all. So that's why this work matters to me. So I want to expand people's choices while continuing to improve access to the real gardens, the parks, and the green neighborhoods.

Hala Darwish

Everyone should have an opportunity to experience nature in a way that works for their life.

Juan Ochoa

Thank you for listening to this episode of Michigan Minds, produced by Michigan News, a division of the university's office of the Vice President for communications.