The soft allure of nature and old movies activates the default mode network, giving the executive network a chance to rest. That is precisely why, after spending some time immersed in nature, our executive-network-based attention can «recharge».
It is easy to wonder whether the legendary ADHD might also be cured by nature.
The full academic term for ADHD is Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (abbreviated as ADHD). In everyday speech, people often shorten ADHD to “hyperactivity,” which is somewhat misleading. Because besides “excessive activity,” the more crucial features of ADHD are “being easily distracted and having difficulty concentrating.”
So, if nature can restore attention, we might reasonably suppose that placing people with ADHD in nature should relieve their symptoms.
In fact, the famous SOAR summer camp in Balsam, North Carolina, is exploring this very possibility. Every summer, a group of children from across the United States who have been diagnosed with ADHD spend some time here doing wilderness adventures and survival training. Although the camp program is not a strictly controlled scientific experiment, the evidence from direct observation has nevertheless found that many children experience a dramatic reduction in ADHD symptoms after living through the camp’s wilderness adventures.
Scientists are also testing this possibility. Frances Kuo of the University of Illinois explored the relationship between ADHD and outdoor activity in a small-sample study. In one of her experiments, exposure to nature reduced children’s ADHD symptoms threefold compared with staying indoors.
In another experiment, children with ADHD took 20-minute walks in a residential neighborhood, on city streets, and in a park. The results showed that after walking in the park, their performance on a backward-digit test (a test requiring intense concentration) improved dramatically—so dramatically that the difference was comparable to the gap between “having ADHD” and “not having ADHD.”
More recently, a study of 2000 children in Barcelona also found that children who spent more time playing in green spaces had milder symptoms of inattention than other children.
So, can we say that nature may indeed «cure» ADHD?
Of course we can understand it that way.
But there is another way to look at it.
If children’s so-called «ADHD» is greatly relieved—or even disappears—when they are placed in nature, we cannot help asking:
Is ADHD really a disease?!
Most of our ancestors had brains hungry for novel stimulation, and to some extent wanted to explore the unknown—though for our ancestors, exploring the unknown mostly meant exploring the natural environment.
This impulse was important to our species. Through this exploration, human beings expanded their habitat to almost every corner of the world, surpassing every other species.
And some of us are more inclined than others to push exploration forward. They are the sensation seekers among us—people who thrive in changing environments and can respond quickly to new information.
These people’s brains need exploration to feel fulfilled, and humanity’s progress into the unknown also needs them to drive it forward.
But in today’s indoor, screen-based world, increasingly cut off from nature, this impulse toward adventure and exploration seems more and more dangerous, and increasingly out of place.
In the past, we called people with this impulse heroes, adventurers, and pioneers;
today, we call them “children with ADHD.”
In the United States, about 10% of children are diagnosed with ADHD. One child in ten is sick—are you fucking kidding me?
ADHD may, to a large extent, simply be a man-made disorder. Most of these children may just be craving a little more adventure and exploration, that’s all.
Note
- This series of articles, “Psychology Bites: New Findings,” was written back in the day to accompany Zhichao Wei: A Short Course on New Findings in Psychology. These short popular-psychology essays and musings were published on the now-closed platform “Fantuan”; the original link no longer exists.
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