A study from 2015 found that walking 90 minutes in a natural or urban settling lowered activity in the prefrontal cortex of the brain, which is the region that focuses on negative emotions.
Thrust of the article is that you can reduce the stress of being cooped up by walking outside.
There’s a bit more to the prefrontal cortex than what the author says. And by the way– I mentioned “the region that focuses on negative emotion” to Mr. Big Food and you should have seen his expression. From that infallible source:
The original studies of Fuster and of Goldman-Rakic emphasized the fundamental ability of the prefrontal cortex to represent information not currently in the environment, and the central role of this function in creating the “mental sketch pad”. Goldman-Rakic spoke of how this representational knowledge was used to intelligently guide thought, action, and emotion, including the inhibition of inappropriate thoughts, distractions, actions, and feelings.[26] In this way, working memory can be seen as fundamental to attention and behavioral inhibition. Fuster speaks of how this prefrontal ability allows the wedding of past to future, allowing both cross-temporal and cross-modal associations in the creation of goal-directed, perception-action cycles.[27] This ability to represent underlies all other higher executive functions.
And that’s just the tip of the brain. There’s more. Excellent neuroscience textbook, fully online and searchable here. It’s an older edition but it will get you started.
Patricia Goldman-Rakic was a very nice woman. Mr. Big Food and I took her to Sitwell’s in Clifton for lunch one day. She was a professor at Yale. She was crossing a street near campus and was hit by a car. It’s a bit unnerving to think how someone so brilliant and influential and nice can die in such a pedestrian way.
Brenda and I did our walk today. I did feel a lot better afterwards. We just did our usual 3 mile/45 minute routine. That’s good enough for me. I don’t think I could have continued at that pace for another 45 minutes.
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Three miles is impressive! And it’s good to get outside.
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Brenda and I did our walk today. I did feel a lot better afterwards. We just did our usual 3 mile/45 minute routine. That’s good enough for me. I don’t think I could have continued at that pace for another 45 minutes.
Three miles is impressive! And it’s good to get outside.