Bratman Reviews New and Emerging Evidence on Why Nature Contact is Good for Us
Posted: 12/4/2025 (CSDE Research)
CSDE Affiliate Gregory Bratman (Environmental and Forest Sciences) recently published an article titled, “Why Nature Contact is Good for Us” in Trends in Cognitive Science. Bratman and his co-author James Gross (Stanford) summarize evidence that nature contact has impacts on negative and positive affective functioning, and discuss recent insights into explanatory pathways, including emotion regulation, psychoneuroimmunology, microbiome, sleep, and physical activity. The authors propose that nature contact is linked to affective functioning via these five interacting pathways at a variety of levels and argue that these pathways are not mutually exclusive.