Travel Brain is Real

And it makes us so much better when we get back

Travel, as the saying goes, is the only thing you buy that makes you richer. The main recipient of that enrichment, as Dr. Marian Diamond discovered, is our brains. Diamond – who once examined Albert Einstein’s brain – broke ground with her research on brains in enriched environments. She found that mice with a lot to keep them occupied, from toys to other mice, had cerebral cortices that were 6% bigger than mice with nothing to do. The stimuli served as training for the brain, letting the mice flex their most important muscles. That neuroplasticity discovery changed how we understand the brain.

The more we stick in one place with one routine, the less active our brains are. They make fewer synaptic connections because they’re not learning much that’s new. Every day is a slight adjustment from the one before, but the environment is basically the same. When we get out of our comfort zones and force our brains to work out, they grow a little bit. With travel brain, our senses jolt back to life with new sights, sounds, smells, and tastes to take in. We think about different things and from different perspectives. We interact with people who lead different lifestyles and speak different languages. We form new routines. That novelty breeds creativity, which we carry back home with us, bringing fresh ideas and vigor to our work.

The Anticipation

It starts even before we go on the trip. The anticipation gets our travel brains going. We research places and imagine ourselves there. The weather’s different, the scenery is different, everything is different. Maybe we bone up on the local language, forcing our brains to think about something that is normally automatic. Once our dates are set, we mark that departure date on our calendars and start the countdown. It gives us a boost of dopamine to push through, looking forward to that vacation.

Bye Bye, Burnout

The minute we stop on our last day before vacation, we toss work concerns away. Some of us are better at leaving work at work than others, but even the Type A’s among us can leave some things behind. We still think about work problems, but in a more abstract way, looking at the bigger picture and taking more time to strategize. When we’re not immersed in the problem day-to-day, we stress less about it.

“Vacations can improve mood and reduce stress by removing people from the activities and environments that they associate with stress and anxiety,” the American Psychological Association says.

You come back refreshed, mentally and physically.

Creative Spark

Once you travel, your brain is in the best shape it’s been in a while. You’re wondering about new things, asking new questions. You’re speaking new words and constantly having new experiences. The juices are flowing in your brain. All of a sudden, you’re making connections you couldn’t see before and coming at your old problems with a new approach.

“Foreign experiences increase both cognitive flexibility and depth and integrativeness of thought, the ability to make deep connections between disparate forms,” says social psychologist Adam Galinsky of the Columbia Business School.

With travel brain, you have exciting new thoughts, and that can’t help but to spill into work. You’re feeling inspired and creative, and the big ideas rush out of you.

“(T)ravel and having new experiences, in general, is very beneficial for creativity because the more bits of information that you have, the more learning that you have,” says Dr. Shelley Carson, author of “Your Creative Brain: Seven Steps to Maximize Imagination, Productivity, and Innovation in Your Life.”

Mind & Body

Walking through a new, beautiful place makes people feel more hopeful than people who aren’t in tune with the views around them. Even if your outdoor exercise routine might include beautiful places, you’re less likely to pay attention to them in detail because they’re routine to your mind. But something you’ve never seen before that leaves you in awe improves your outlook on life. That feeling of optimism has major benefits for body and mind.

“Optimism may significantly influence mental and physical well-being by the promotion of a healthy lifestyle as well as by adaptive behaviors and cognitive responses, associated with greater flexibility, problem-solving capacity and a more efficient elaboration of negative information,” the authors of a 2010 study wrote.

Adventurous physical activities help our brains confront and overcome new challenges, often at a quick pace. As our brains get older, this can help keep them sharp and curious. Our brains sprout new dendrites, quite literally growing our minds, says University of Pittsburgh neuropsychologist Dr. Paul Nussbaum.

“When you expose your brain to an environment that’s novel and complex or new and difficult, the brain literally reacts,” he told the Chicago Tribune.

That’s travel brain, the best workout your mind can get.