The Atchleys, for their part, would also soon run an experiment to
see if group problem-solving improved among workers outside versus
workers inside.
I’d have to stay tuned. The trip had crystallized for me some
critical questions to keep in mind as I moved ahead. If nature
environments have the potential to change both our emotional brains
and our cognitive brains, how would different doses of nature affect
us? How much of the benefits of nature are really because of what’s
in nature versus simply leaving behind the bad stuff of cities and
workplaces? And, based on what I would learn about our perceptual
systems, how could we improve our normal lives back at home?
For science, I was learning, you have to be patient. But maybe you
can draw a payoff like Gazzaley’s pursuit of an American three-toed
woodpecker in Rocky Mountain National Park. Before the moon set,
he pulled up some of his photographs on his laptop and scrolled
through them for us. The bird was coy, finally poking his spectacular
black-and-white-striped head out of a hole in a tree. But Gazzaley was
ready, camera in hand.
“I had to wait six hours for this fucker,” he said.
Together and apart, the group would be looking at the puzzle of
nature and the brain from many angles. As Paul Atchley put it at the
end of the evening, no doubt inspired by the night sky, the beverages
and a new laser focus in his attentional network, “It’s many fingers
pointed at the moon. If you look at all the different fingers, eventually
you can see where the moon is even though every perspective is
different. There won’t be a single piece of evidence. Science doesn’t
work that way.”
These and other emerging studies would make up the next frontier
in understanding nature’s role in optimizing human potential, many
aided by brain imaging. With more clues about what makes our brains
happy and keeps them running smoothly, that information can be fed
into public policy decisions, urban planning and architectural design.