’s
NATURE
smell pine, herbs, or marijuana, your
immune system gets a little boost.
Looking back, my upstairs neighbors
in college were actually helping
me every time they smoked…um…
oregano at 2 am.
FRACTALS
Fractals are patterns that repeat
themselves over and over again at
diferent scales. Take, for example, a
fern frond upon which sits a number
of smaller frondlets that themselves
have a series of even smaller frondlets,
and these frondlets have even smaller
frondlets, etc. At every scale, the
pattern of the fronds and frondlets
are the same.
Fractals found in nature are called
natural fractals or statistical fractals
because they don’t repeat themselves
exactly. For instance, there is always
a little randomness that prevents
frondlets from being exact duplicates
of the fronds. Nature is never perfect.
Exact fractals, on the other hand, are
just that—exact. The pattern repeats
exactly at every scale. Why is this
important? Well, hold your frondlet,
I’m getting to it.
It turns out that even our brains
are physically structured in fractal
patterns. We even process information
in a fractal pattern. Sensations travel
fractal pathways in our brains and
initiate behaviors that themselves are
manifested via connections that are,
yes, fractals. This fractal nature of
our brains is hypothesized to be one
reason why we seem to find fractals so
dang satisfying to look at. But there’s
more to it than just aesthetics. For
reasons that we don’t fully understand,
when we view fractals, we feel less
stressed, we become better able to
cope with frustration, and our ability
to focus and learn new information
improves. Even when we are not
consciously aware that we are viewing
fractals, our brains are tuned to locate
and respond to fractal patterns.
Amazingly, but not surprisingly, our
brains are significantly more sensitive
to natural fractals—the ones we
see when we hike outside—than to
exact fractal patterns, which are less
routinely encountered.
NATURE Rx
It probably comes as no surprise to
you that spending time in nature
helps our physical and mental health.
I’ve always felt the benefits of being
outside, but when we uncover the
scientific mechanisms underlying
those benefits, it solidifies for me that
even when I felt alone, Mother Nature
was taking care of me. It’s no wonder
that my preferred brand of self-care
is hiking and gardening. There’s just
something about being covered in
mud that you can’t get out of a bottle.
By Cory Christopher,
Director of Conservation
Fall/Winter 2024 | CincyNature.org 7