Traveling Is Good For Your Brain
Traveling is a great experience for all the senses. It arouses our interest, amuses us and allows us to see amazing places and nourish ourselves with other cultures. All this does not simply remain in the memory and in some photos, but is also related to a series of benefits for your brain.
The brain is a plastic organ and is capable of being modified based on our experience. As it is not going to be minor, traveling gives us the opportunity to live experiences that will challenge our brain.
5 effects that traveling has on your brain
1. Increase your creativity
Creativity is a capacity that allows us to provide different and original solutions to any type of problem. For this, the person is required to be able to generate many ideas, to be able to put himself in another perspective and find a genuine way to respond.
Traveling is a deep cultural immersion. It envelops us in an environment in which almost everything can be new and puts us in the position of taking different perspectives. This idea is not just a hypothesis, a recent study by the “Academy of Management Journal” has proven it. This study has found that people who have worked and had professional experiences abroad are more imaginative and creative than those who stayed in their country of origin.
2. Expand your social networks
It is evident that traveling new places and people are known. We interact with more and very different people. But also, in the event that you travel with company, a trip will strengthen the relationship and trust between the two of you.
For example, a review study found that travel reduces the likelihood of divorce, strengthens family ties, and improves feelings of well-being.
And what does this have to do with the brain? Well, it turns out that social relationships protect our brain. Having a wide network of friends and, therefore, supportive ones, and interacting with them is associated with a lower presence of cognitive impairment. In addition, getting involved in activities with our friends relieves us of stress, we have fun and laugh, all very healthy activities for the brain.
3. Improve your ability to solve problems
When we expose our brain to new situations, many neural networks are activated to learn everything possible. In other words, facing something new is a huge stimulant for our brain. Thanks to neuroscience, we know that exposing the brain to these conditions often is beneficial. Thus, neural connections are strengthened and new networks can even be created.
These changes in the brain could be translated as a way of training our brain to solve tasks more effectively. An example of this is a study carried out by the ” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology”, which concluded that students who have lived abroad perform 20% better in problem-solving tasks than those who have not traveled .
4. Increases lucidity
5. It frees you from stress
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Doing rewarding activities like traveling lowers our levels of cortisol (the stress hormone). This is really important since cortisol, apart from being necessary, in large doses can be very harmful. This substance has been linked to worse cognitive performance, fatigue, weight gain, and even diseases such as diabetes.
