How the City Hurts Your Brain 439
Hugh Pickens writes "The city has always been an engine of intellectual life and the 'concentration of social interactions' is largely responsible for urban creativity and innovation. But now scientists are finding that being in an urban environment impairs our basic mental processes. After spending a few minutes on a crowded city street, the brain is less able to hold things in memory and suffers from reduced self-control. 'The mind is a limited machine,' says psychologist Marc Berman. 'And we're beginning to understand the different ways that a city can exceed those limitations.' Consider everything your brain has to keep track of as you walk down a busy city street. A city is so overstuffed with stimuli that we need to redirect our attention constantly so that we aren't distracted by irrelevant things. This sort of controlled perception — we are telling the mind what to pay attention to — takes energy and effort. Natural settings don't require the same amount of cognitive effort. A study at the University of Michigan found memory performance and attention spans improved by 20 percent after people spent an hour interacting with nature. 'It's not an accident that Central Park is in the middle of Manhattan,' says Berman. 'They needed to put a park there.'"
Re:What a bunch of BS (Score:3, Informative)
He did not say it's better to live in the 'wild', rather, it's better to be in a more natural environments, small city's [theworldac...tokang.com], village's [theworldac...tokang.com] ... etc.
The plural for "city" is "cities" and the plural for "village" is "villages." No grammar nazism here, just helping a fellow.
This is just nature-is-better-than-tech garbage (Score:4, Informative)
According to my MIT Encyclopedia of Cognitive Science: Cities function as a cognitive artifact. Cognitive artifacts are external physical things that aid cognition.
Humans are not all the same, and what most humans were 10,000 years ago has little to do with our default abilities and preferences today. There is not even a linear progression, various climate and cultural filters have output humans with vastly different ideal environments.
The nature-would-do-us-best thesis is a feelgood mythology for people ill suited for the present technological norms most humans practice.
On a personal note have lived in Seattle, Akutan AK (island in Bering Sea), Kanab UT, and Antarctica. My mind did fine in all four places.
Re:What a bunch of BS (Score:4, Informative)
Central park is where it is because they needed somewhere to graze cows so the city could have fresh milk. The same reason as almost every urban park in the world.
Got any evidence for that? This [wikipedia.org] seems to contradict that, and my understanding is that a lot of parks in the UK were created during the 19th century for the use of the growing urban population.
Also, especially given the smaller size of cities in the pre-mass transportation area, I doubt that having the cows smack in a designated area in the middle of the city as opposed to any other pocket of green land or keeping them on the outskirts was very likely.
Re:Well, no... (Score:3, Informative)
Must be all those pollutants in the river.
I realize your probably just trolling but you do know that NYC doesn't get it's water [nyc.gov] from the Hudson right? They get it from Upstate. It's one of the things I love to remind them about when they start bitching about how much money the city pays out in State taxes. "You can have your money back when you can secure your own water supply and stop sending us your felons"
About the only thing going for it is it ISN'T New Jersey.
Well, there is that ;)
Re:What a bunch of BS (Score:3, Informative)
Well, here in Virginia I see a fair number of poisonous snakes, and coyotes do from time to time kill kids out West, but for North America you are basically correct. There are, however, a lot of things that can hurt you, and that is what I intended to say. If you ever (say) sit down on a convenient rock next to a fire ant nest to change camera lenses (as I did once) you will forever after pay more attention to where you sit. Once you see a snake sunning behind a log you just stepped over, you pay more attention to where you step, etc.
Re:Brain Underload - Brain Overload (Score:4, Informative)
a proposal was floated that suggested that pilots be allowed/encouraged to play video games during those 'down times'
Maybe a flight sim?
Re:Well, no... (Score:5, Informative)
That would be difficult, since the NYC subways use the rails for grounding. The main reason the subways in NYC are so noisy is the speed that the trains operate at, which is typically 10-20MPH faster than other subway systems in America (which is why similarly old systems, like the Boston subways, are so much quieter). There is an effort with the newest subway trains to reduce noise, but that is mainly aimed at the passengers riding the train, not those standing on the platforms.
One of the things that the NYC subway system has going for it, that other systems do not really have, is the ability to operate 24x7x365 with few disruptions in service. There are several reasons for this, but the primary two are the distributed nature of the control system (which is unfortunately due to be centralized as part of a plan to install computers to replace the ancient equipment they use) and the large number of lines and tracks which make reroutes possible. It is possible to perform maintenance on the NYC subways, and in fact, this is done on nights and weekends, which is why there are route changes every weekend, with the exception of holidays.
"Must be all those pollutants in the river. Maybe they've permanently altered your taste buds."
NYC's water supply does not come from the rivers that surrounding Manhattan. The water in NYC comes from a large reservoir in the mountains in the middle of New York State, and is carried to the city using three enormous pipes. The tap water is actually among the cleanest in the US, and NYC is one of the few places where the majority of contaminants in tap water come from old pipes in the final stages of delivery, rather than the supply itself.
"Seriously, the air absolutely stinks and the streets are filthy."
This is not unique to NYC, it is the case in any large city. Large cities always have been and always will be more polluted than small cities and towns. When you have millions of people living in such a small area, it is difficult to keep the ground and air pristine.
Comment removed (Score:3, Informative)
Re:I find it stimulating (Score:3, Informative)
Time to get yourself some good music and noise canceling headphones!
Re:This is just nature-is-better-than-tech garbage (Score:3, Informative)
Tell that to my desire to mate with as many attractive females as possible.
Or my preference to be warm in cold climates
Or my preference to be cool in hot climates.
Or my preference to consume both plant and animal matter.
Or my preference to often associate with other humans.
Or my ability to become enraged when my desires are frustrated or when I'm attacked either emotionally or physically.
Or my ability to feel compelled to take care of cute things - especially humans, most especially ones that look like me.
Or my ability to protect, and preference to, defend weaker family members.
A great deal of the things we feel, experience, and are capable of today have been with us for hundreds, if not thousands of generations. They're probably just not impinging on your awareness because they're so ingrained and ubiquitous.
Re:This is just nature-is-better-than-tech garbage (Score:3, Informative)
It is only in 2007 that the world became more urban than rural [ncsu.edu], up until then "most" humans lived in a rural environment.