Who knew that the architect behind St. Paul's Cathedral was also an anatomist who diagrammed

the human brain?

Fast forward three centuries and new scientists of the brain are learning why our sensory

experience in a place like a cathedral, the incense, the soaring music, the stained glass

and the light is physiologically good for us.

Esther Sternberg is an immunologist and a pioneer on this new frontier that's giving rise

to disciplines like neuroimmunology and environmental psychology.

Architects are working with scientists to imbue the spaces we move through, the sites,

sounds and smells of them with active healing properties.

And Esther Sternberg says all of us can create surroundings and even portable sensations

to manage stress and tap our brain's own internal pharmacies.

What is it?

Beautiful vistas of mountains about the infinite horizon of the ocean, about a cathedral.

There are certainly physiological and neuroscientific bases to that feeling and I am convinced I know

that these things can be measured and that's the exciting new frontier for me to ask exactly

that question.

I'm Krista Tippett and this is on being.

I spoke with Esther Sternberg in 2012.

She grew up in Canada, surrounded by scientists.

Her father survived a concentration camp in Russia to become a pioneer of nuclear medicine.

She trained with a good deal of scientific skepticism that emotions play any role in health.

She had a radical change of mind between breakthroughs and medical research, the illness

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