Photo by Susan Gold on Unsplash

Anxiety: The Surprising Way You Can Use Fractal Geometry to Find Peace

MENTAL HEALTH prescription offered by Stanford researchers. That’s the headline I recently discovered. Gretchen Dailey and colleagues of the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment offer this observation:

Nature walking yields measurable mental benefits and may reduce the risk of depression.

While I don’t doubt the report, I wonder why nature is such a good prescription. Today I want to explore how computer analysis is helping us to understand how clouds, coastlines, trees, and Jackson Pollock’s wild paintings create fractal patterns that bring us a sense of calm.

I don’t know about you, but if I am feeling a little down, a walk amongst trees helps me to feel better. Stanford University (USA) researchers report that people who walked for 90 minutes in a natural area (compared with subjects who walked in a high-traffic urban setting) demonstrated lower activity in a brain region associated with depression.

Photo by Emily Karakis on Unsplash

Here’s what the researchers did: Upon arrival, participants completed a self-report form measuring rumination. The subjects then had a neuroimaging scan with a magnetic…