Journal article
In search of features that constitute an "enriched environment" in humans. Associations between geographical properties and brain structure
- Abstract:
- Enriched environments elicit brain plasticity in animals. In humans it is unclear which environment is enriching. Living in a city has been associated with increased amygdala activity in a stress paradigm, and being brought up in a city with increased pregenual anterior cingulate (pACC) activity. We set out to identify geographical characteristics that constitute an enriched environment affecting the human brain. We used structural equation modelling on 341 older adults to establish three latent brain factors (amygdala, pACC and dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC)) to test the effects of forest, urban green, water and wasteland around the home address. Our results reveal a significant positive association between the coverage of forest and amygdala integrity. We conclude that forests may have salutogenic effects on the integrity of the amygdala. Since cross-sectional data does not allow causal inference it could also be that individuals with high structural integrity choose to live closer to forest.
- Publication status:
- Published
- Peer review status:
- Peer reviewed
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(Preview, Version of record, pdf, 1.7MB, Terms of use)
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- Publisher copy:
- 10.1038/s41598-017-12046-7
Authors
- Publisher:
- Nature Publishing Group
- Journal:
- Scientific Reports More from this journal
- Volume:
- 7
- Pages:
- 11920
- Publication date:
- 2017-09-01
- Acceptance date:
- 2017-08-22
- DOI:
- EISSN:
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2045-2322
- ISSN:
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2045-2322
- Keywords:
- Pubs id:
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pubs:725059
- UUID:
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uuid:a6deb238-dd7e-4a2c-a837-ae2c40822c0b
- Local pid:
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pubs:725059
- Source identifiers:
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725059
- Deposit date:
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2017-09-04
Terms of use
- Copyright holder:
- Eibich et al
- Copyright date:
- 2017
- Notes:
- © The Author(s) 2017. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. Te images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
- Licence:
- CC Attribution (CC BY)
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