1-9 Your environment affects who you are

What do you feel when you walk into a cathedral? Light is streaming in through the stained glass. The ceiling soars above your head. Cavernous echoes create a sense of a vast space. It smells old. Compared to the world outside, your brain tells you that this space is sacred. It makes you feel different. It elicits different thoughts. You are different person inside the cathedral. Now walk in to a stadium filled with 100,000 fans for a football game. The sights are brighter than outside the stadium, and the sounds are much louder.

[APPLAUSE]

The crowd roars when a goal is stored. You are caught up in the emotional moment. This is why we still go to live sporting events, even though the camera angles are much, much better on TV. These experiences have an impact on your brain. Whether you immerse yourself in a quiet, contemplative environment, or a hyper-stimulated one, you are changing your thought patterns, and that changes your brain. Different emotional states, different memories, different brain. Is your environment helping you to achieve our goals? Sometimes even small changes in your environment can lead to big differences over time. The Salk Institute for Biological Studies where I work is a special place. As you approach the Salk Institute from outside, it looks like a concrete fortress. But as you enter the central courtyard, there is a dramatic change. A broad expands of travertine stretches out to the Pacific Ocean with towers rising along the sides, anchoring the other worldly space. The Salk Institute was designed by Louis Khan, a famous architect working together with Jonas Salk, who invented the vaccine that cured polio in the 1950s. The building is an architectural landmark. Jonas was a medical researcher but he founded an institute whose mission was basic science. Our motto, cures begin here. Salk reinvented himself as a visionary, and wanted his institute to inspire the researchers working there to make important scientific breakthroughs, and we have. I am inspired every day when I arrive for work. The entrance opens onto the tea room, the heart of my lab. Students in my lab come from many countries and have diverse backgrounds. And they all gather around the tea table every day at 3:30. Some of the most important scientific ideas from my lab arose from tea time discussions. The ceilings in my lab are 10 feet high. Studies have shown that people think and act differently in environments with high ceilings. They think more freely and abstractly. People in a room with low ceilings are more likely to focus on the specifics. All of these factors are important for building a community of passionate and creative researchers. Now let’s walk into a hospital. They are remarkably similar in their layout in every city and almost all countries. In 2004, I attended a workshop in Woods Hole, Massachusetts sponsored by the Academy of Neuroscience for Architecture that explored the design of health care facilities. The workshop was an eye opener. Based on what we know about environments that promote health and healing, modern hospitals could not be more badly designed. Look! First, let’s look at the lighting. Many studies have shown that lighting has a pervasive effect on physiology and behavior. Outdoor light promotes arousal. Dark indoor lighting provokes inactivity. Large windows with views of nature encourage healing. Rooms with small windows overlooking parking lots are depressing. The sickest patients are sent to the intensive care unit, where there are no windows, and the light is kept at the same level all day long. We have a circadian clock that regulates awake and sleep cycles, which are entrained by bright light. When you travel to a distant time zone you feel disoriented for days until your circadian clock has shifted. Putting a patient into constant lighting untethers their brain, making it clueless about the time of day. Sound is also an important part of the healing environment. Alarms can go off any time of the day or night in a hospital to alert the staff of an emergency. This also alarms the brains of the sick people who have enough to worry about without a menacing sound. Good nutrition is essential to building a strong body and healthy brain. I have eaten some of the worst food ever in hospitals, unhealthy choices, poorly prepared, go figure. Finally and above all, it is stressful to live in an unpredictable environment. The privacy of hospital patients can be invaded any time of the day or night for an examination, a teaching moment, a blood draw, or even more invasive procedures. If you were worried about your health before arriving at a hospital, the environment there will amplify your worries. Look around you and notice your environment. Is it conducive to your goals? Is there a way that it can be changed? Sometimes, just changing your walking route can brighten your surroundings.