The Huge Impact of Environmental Neuroscience: Effective Ways to Grow Attention and Cognition with Dr. Marc Berman

Raising Good Humans

Dear Media, Aliza Pressman

Toddler, Sinai, Mount, Doctor, Mother, Science, Dear, Baby, Motherhood, Parenting, Psychology, Pressman, Education, Humans, Seedlings, Kids & Family, Adolescence, Children, Child, Childhood, Parent, Good, Raising, Infant, Media, Aliza

4.6 • 1.8K Ratings

🗓️ 8 August 2025

⏱️ 50 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In today’s episode, I sit down with Dr. Mark Berman, the pioneer of environmental neuroscience, to explore the surprising science behind how nature enhances cognitive, physical, and social wellbeing. We dive into how spending time in nature—whether it’s a walk in the park or simply looking at nature photos—can boost attention, memory, and mood. Dr. Berman also shares practical tips for how to incorporate nature’s benefits into your daily routine, even if you don't have easy access to green spaces.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	The following podcast is a Dear Media production.
0:10.4	Welcome to Raising Good Humans podcast. I'm Dr. Elisa Pressman, and today we are talking about nature and the mind.
0:18.8	The science of how nature improves cognitive, physical, and social well-being.
0:23.6	I have Dr. Mark Berman, who created the entire field of environmental neuroscience.
0:30.8	He uses science to show that spending time in natural environments can ultimately boost
0:35.5	our ability to direct attention. It's actually kind of staggering
0:39.5	a 20% improvement in attention-related abilities from integrating nature into your day-to-day.
0:46.8	So how that is practically applied is a big part of this conversation and solutions beyond
0:53.5	just taking a beautiful hike because not all of us
0:57.1	can do that every day. In fact, I was really surprised and delighted to hear that though it is not
1:03.7	going to have as much of an impact, even looking at beautiful pictures of nature and having
1:09.8	plants in your house can have an impact on
1:12.9	your brain. We've never talked about on Raising Good Humans podcast, what is environmental
1:20.2	neuroscience and how does it help us? So environmental neuroscience is a field that sort of combines
1:27.4	environmental psychology and cognitive neuroscience
1:31.1	and really focuses on how the external physical environment can actually impact brain and behavior.
1:38.2	And I think a lot of us sort of underestimate how powerful the physical environment can be on our behavior and
1:46.9	on our brain functioning. As humans, we have so much control over the physical environment
1:51.8	that I think we often kind of forget that the physical environment actually can have a very
1:58.6	profound impact on our behavior. So in environmental neuroscience, we're
2:02.8	really trying to understand how different physical environments impact brain and behavior,
2:08.5	what aspects of the physical environment impact brain and behavior. And then, you know,
	...

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