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The promise of environmental neuroscience

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The physical and social environment that surrounds us has a profound impact on our brains and behaviour. This impact is so fundamental that a complete understanding of neural mechanisms cannot be developed without taking into account the extensive interactions between neurobiology, psychology, behaviour and the environment.

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Fig. 1: The elements of environmental neuroscience.

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Acknowledgements

We dedicate this work in memory of one of M.G.B.’s mentors, Dr. Stephen Kaplan (1936–2018), who inspired a lot of this thinking. This work was supported in part by a grant from the TKF Foundation to M.G.B., the John Templeton Foundation grant for the University of Chicago Center for Practical Wisdom to H.C.N., a grant from the National Science Foundation (BCS-1632445) to M.G.B., as well as an internal grant from the University of Chicago to M.G.B. We thank K. Schertz and E. Layden for their help in creating Fig. 1.

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Correspondence to Marc G. Berman.

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Berman, M.G., Kardan, O., Kotabe, H.P. et al. The promise of environmental neuroscience. Nat Hum Behav 3, 414–417 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-019-0577-7

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