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.'"
Good exercise? (Score:4, Insightful)
Just because its more distracting doesn't mean its bad for you.
What natural setting? (Score:5, Insightful)
Natural settings don't require the same amount of cognitive effort.
A jungle or other wild forest does. It is living in cultivated land (farmland or even managed forests) that requires an unnatural low amount of cognitive effort.
I find it stimulating (Score:3, Insightful)
I wonder if they studied city people or country folk?
Personally I like having that level of movement and activity around, I find it somehow comforting. I certainly don't find "coping" with city streets stressful, except when it's nearing christmas and all the f*ck-damned tourists are crowding up the place and getting in the way.
Guess I've lived in the city long enough to not find it a problem.
They needed to put a park there. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:What natural setting? (Score:5, Insightful)
What a bunch of BS (Score:5, Insightful)
First, Central Park was put on the edge of the city when it was built. In the 19th century people tended to think ahead more.
Second, I would bet the author has never actually been in a truly wild setting, where there are animals around that might hunt you. The wild is no place to be oblivious.
Third, note this from the original article (really a press release) :
The researchers also tested the same theory by having subjects sit inside and look at pictures of either downtown scenes or nature scenes and again the results were the same: when looking at photos of nature, memory and attention scores improved by about 20 percent, but not when viewing the urban pictures.
If looking at pictures can help your memory its clearly not so much where you are, as what you are looking at. I wonder what city views they were showing, and whether, say, views of Paris or Prague would cause the same reaction.
If what they are saying really boils down to that we need some beauty in our surroundings, they are a few thousand years behind the times.
Re:Just visit Manhattan (Score:5, Insightful)
Presumably they eventually manage to recover at least somewhat, but I can tell you from personal experience that they remain permanently insufferable. Ask anyone who has lived in New York about pizza, or public transportation, or pretty much anything else for that matter and the conversation will eventually turn to how much better New York is than wherever it is they currently happen to be. One wonders why they don't just go back and stay there.
I have yet to meet an ex-New Yorker who isn't excessively proud of the fact that he once lived in "The City". They're worse than Texans.
Re:What a bunch of BS (Score:2, Insightful)
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, village's ... etc.
Well, no... (Score:2, Insightful)
You seem kind of bitter about it. New York has some things going for it--if it didn't, it wouldn't be such a huge place economically and culturally.
The public transportation is pretty good, except that they haven't put in new subway lines since the private sector got less involved. But the subway is 24-hour, which is pretty great, and it basically never shuts down for maintenance. That doesn't mean it's always safe, but it's nice. (At 3 in the morning, there are places you don't want to go.)
The pizza's good because the water's right for it--you can't make good pizza with the wrong kind of water. I don't know why, it just works out that way. If you are also lucky enough to know a place with a good chef, you're in heaven.
Other cities have virtues, too--e.g. Seattle with its Coffee and Imperial Walkers. And I've heard they have a troll under a bridge, which is wonderful!
Re:Well, no... (Score:2, Insightful)
Thanks for proving my point. There are things to like about New York. New Yorkers are not one of them. Ex-New Yorkers even less so.
The only thing I'm less interested in than how awesome New York is would be hearing people talk about how awesome New York is.
Re:Just visit Manhattan (Score:5, Insightful)
I disagree. The tourists are the only ones looking at everything trying to catch it all in, not the locals going about their daily life. The rest of us are just avoiding eye contact and only paying attention to where we are going and what's going to intersect our path getting there.
Re:What a bunch of BS (Score:5, Insightful)
There are more dangerous animals that would hunt and kill you in the middle of New York city than any wild area in the world.
Please try to go outside once in a while, and don't believe the scaremongering.
OS analogy (Score:5, Insightful)
being raised in a rural town, i suspect that I notice this effect much more strongly than urbanites. when i'm in the city, everything is fighting for my attention simultaneously, so i just tune everything out.
I wonder if something similar occurs when using a multitasking operating system.
in the old days, a personal computer would be set to do one thing and one thing only at any one time. now i have music running in the background, along with gimp and pidgin, while i try to post on Slashdot. I'm so distracted, this post took me nearly 45 minutes to type up, and i can almost guarantee I wont get a +5 insightful.
city vs country (Score:2, Insightful)
on an inter personal level as well i've found most city born and breed types are emotional train wrecks.
Re:Just visit Manhattan (Score:4, Insightful)
Londoners have the same disease, to a slightly lesser extent.
I'm moving away from *my* City, London, in a few months and I just hope I don't turn into one of those people.
"Oh, well when I was in London..."
"In London you can get..."
"Well in London these things are open 24 hours..."
"What, you don't have any sushi/thai/dim-sum restaurants within walking distance?"
"Oh but in London I could always find..."
Yeah.
Re:Good exercise? (Score:5, Insightful)
Exactly, I've seen people drive a car while putting on make up, talking on the phone, reading the paper, and drinking a cup of coffee all at the same time and have yet to see a single car accident in any city I've ever lived in. And we've never heard of someone not paying attention on the street and stepping in front of a car/bus.
Hell, my kids tell me that they can do homework while watching TV and chatting online.
Yes, distractions are not bad for you large cup of coffee with cream and an egg mcmuffin please and they actually help.
Re:I find it stimulating (Score:5, Insightful)
Or shared cubicles. Or cubicles where you can hear EVERYTHING your coworkers are doing. Or the noise of dozens or hundreds of PCs.
Since the city is supposed to hurt the brain, can I get a doctors' note to go work in the country instead of the office?
Seriously, it's no wonder that I get more work done when I work from home than from the office.
Re:Well, no... (Score:4, Insightful)
You seem to have spent the last year in a coma. Let me bring you up to date. Financial market crashed. Banks bailed out. Wall Street decimated.
It's also noisy. Maybe they should do some maintenance, and switch over to a rubber-tired system.
Must be all those pollutants in the river. Maybe they've permanently altered your taste buds.
Seriously, the air absolutely stinks and the streets are filthy. About the only thing going for it is it ISN'T New Jersey.
Re:What a bunch of BS (Score:4, Insightful)
Wolves and pumas were the only two real predators to be concerned of unless you were a child
Wolves are generally pretty leery of human beings and go out of their way to avoid us. Pumas are more hit and miss -- some will avoid and some will try to ambush you. A buddy of mine had one jump out of cover at him and wound up having to shoot the poor thing.
I think you forgot bears though. They will generally avoid you but if you surprise one or stumble upon Mama and her cubs you'd better have brought a change of underwear and a really big gun......
Re:Just visit Manhattan (Score:5, Insightful)
I find that people who have this view of Manhattan only know it from movies and TV shows. Generally, I have found people in Manhattan to be pleasant and helpful ... although one must make allowances for their adaptations to living in large crowds. The first time I went into Grand Central Station, I got swept along by a crowd that had just been disgorged by a subway entrance. My experience of Manhattan crowds is different from the GP's; generally I find the bulk of them very focused on going about whatever their business is. The sheer size of the crowds means that you can probably find any kind of behavior you're looking for. I find I can observe more people walking down a Manhattan block than I normally do in the course of a month.
Generally speaking, Manhattan feels as safe as any other city, especially if we are talking from Central Park south during the day time. There are a lot of human friendly aspects to Manhattan's urban landscape. First and foremost are the very very wide sidewalks, which other cities would do well to emulate. This gives plenty of space to large volumes of pedestrian traffic, fed by a dense public transit network. This creates a vibrant street level commercial economy, which may seem overwhelming at first, until you realize that a Manhattan block is like a city in miniature. You don't have to walk a mile to find something you want; as often as not it's no more than a block away; further and you take transit.
Overall, I find Manhattan to be very comfortable and convenient, once you've adapted a bit to the rhythm and pace. I wonder if the study was perhaps confounded by several things. First, are the subjects accustomed to walking in an urban landscape? If you repeated the experiment a dozen times, would the score for city walkers change? Secondly, are the routes chosen pedestrian friendly? If not the results may simply reflect the results of stress.
I don't deny that nature is important, and don't doubt that experiencing natural settings regularly is a contributor to mental health. But in many ways, dense urban landscapes are both good for people and the environment, when compared to sprawl.
Re:What a bunch of BS (Score:3, Insightful)
For the vast majority of human evolution, nature has been filled with large predators that were perfectly happy to eat a relatively slow, defenseless primate. It's only in the last 10,000 years that situation has been reversed.
Re:Central Park isn't natural (Score:4, Insightful)
I think you left out roughly 70% of the Earth's surface there.
Re:Good exercise? (Score:2, Insightful)
Exactly, I've seen people drive a car while putting on make up, talking on the phone, reading the paper, and drinking a cup of coffee all at the same time and have yet to see a single car accident in any city I've ever lived in.
You've seen those people doing that... and you've never seen an accident happen... but did you study a large group of people doing all that behind the wheel, and a large group not doing all that, and compare the accident rates? Wouldn't that be better statistics to base a conclusion on than on your perception of every day life?
And we've never heard of someone not paying attention on the street and stepping in front of a car/bus.
That doesn't mean that accidents don't happen, of course. It's not the point though. People will pay attention and not get hit by a bus. The point is that it takes energy, and the continuous stimulation of the brain tires it down, and it leaves less attention for the things more joyful than "not getting hit by a bus".
Hell, my kids tell me that they can do homework while watching TV and chatting online.
You believed them? Would you seriously believe that doing e.g. math continuously mixed with TV and chats will be as productive as the flow you can get into by doing just math?
Re:This is just nature-is-better-than-tech garbage (Score:3, Insightful)
There's really not that much difference between the city and the jungle. I watch out for cars, muggers, and mall bargins. My great-great-great grandpa watched for bears, wolves, and nice fresh fruit to eat.
Re:Well, no... (Score:5, Insightful)
I was born in NYC and am still living there currently. I also get really annoyed with the all the people who think New York is the greatest thing ever too, but you don't find me bashing it every chance I get on Slashdot. The amount of disdain you have for New Yorkers borders on the amount of homophobia you would find from a closeted homosexual. I'm not saying you're a closet New Yorker, but that's just what it comes off as... just saying...
Re:Well, no... (Score:1, Insightful)
Sounds like someone had a bad experience as a tourist.
Must be all those pollutants in the river. Maybe they've permanently altered your taste buds.
NYC's water supply comes from reservoirs in the Catskills. A recent (May 2008) study concluded that tap water in NYC is some of the cleanest tap water you can find in the entire world: http://www.uswaternews.com/archives/arcquality/8newxyork5.html
It's also noisy. Maybe they should do some maintenance, and switch over to a rubber-tired system.
It gets cold in New York. Many trains (Q, R, N, 4, 5, A, C...) operate above ground once they get into the Bronx or further into Brooklyn or Queens. Rubber tires are almost completely useless in snowy and/or icy conditions. It just won't work. It's noisy, sure, but how noisy is an average busy street? In addition, the newer cars (R142s, R142As) are much quieter than the old ones due to better insulation.
Seriously, the air absolutely stinks and the streets are filthy.
I will give you the dirty streets bit - SOMETIMES - but for the air, well buddy, if you spent most of your time among the rest of the tourists then yes, you'd have been surrounded by exhaust. Try heading to someplace BESIDES midtown Manhattan (like, say, Prospect Park in Brooklyn, or Governor's Island, or the Cloisters in Manhattan) and then tell me the air stinks.
Re:What a bunch of BS (Score:3, Insightful)
There are more dangerous animals that would hunt and kill you in the middle of New York city
Riiight... it's the GP that's the one who's scaremongering...
Re:I find it stimulating (Score:5, Insightful)
Shared cubes? Cubes are insulting enough. If I were offered a job in a shared cube, I would laugh, walk out the door, then shit in front of their door. That's called reciprocity.
Re:OS analogy (Score:1, Insightful)
FINALLY. After reading the comments all the way down (just about to rtfa) somebody, namely theheadlessrabbit, finally said something that addresses something important.
Cities are _designed_ to pull your attention in a thousand ways. Capitalism causes that. If you pay attention to someone or something you're more likely to give that someone or something money, so cities, which are far more money-centric than less population dense areas, will always be more attention hungry than everything else. Even the wildest jungle (to follow the hyperbole). We spend billions on marketing (the art of getting and keeping people's attention), so naturally we're going to be good at it.
The jungle, on the other hand, doesn't give two shits what you pay attention to. Sure there's lots to choose from, but the choice is yours. And you get to focus on whatever you want for as long as you want (ie no commercial interruptions in every sense of the phrase).
Of course, the jungle hyperbole was just a /. invention, but I'll leave it to you to realize this applies even better in safer natural environments.
And since brains tend to get better at things they do often (no I'm not going to cite anything for this, but go ahead and find me someone who disagrees), you'd expect that in places where you get to choose and focus your attention people will be better at paying attention to things they care about than people in places where their attention is going like a speed-freaked superball. To say it more concisely, OF COURSE forcing people to hyperactively shift their attention will teach them to be ADHD. DUH.
Think about academia. Lots of good, focused, thinking goes on at colleges all over the world. Now think about the types of schools that generally produce the major thinkers within the group of thinkers. What [uci.edu] is [ox.ac.uk] their [admissionsync.com] layout [teu.ac.jp] like [wikimedia.org]? I'll tell you that I've never seen a picture of a campus with a 3lane each way road, nor of a 10+ story building, nor a subway system...
Re:What natural setting? (Score:5, Insightful)
Someone: Nature is feels safer and is less distracting than busy, urban environments.
You: That's wrong! The only reason you find nature relaxing is that you have the comforts and conveniences of modern civilization to protect you and to go back to.
Someone else: It's easier to think clearly in nature than in a crowded, loud place like cities.
You: No, nature is not superior to civilization, and the only reason you think so is that you're romanticizing nature while taking advantage of all the benefits of society.
It's very true that being immersed in nature would likely be much less relaxing (and less distraction-free) if not for civilization, but does that change the fact that nature is indeed relaxing for many (most?) people? And that is indeed a better place to think (for many)? Nobody's suggesting stripping naked, smearing ourselves with mud, running into the woods, and hunting deer with a stick, but thanks to modern civilization much of nature is a safe, relatively tranquil place which is good for deep thinking.
Interesting! (Score:0, Insightful)
Hey cayenne8, why don't you come down here and lick my balls. Come on. Kneel and lick them. You know you want to. After all, you are a worthless sack of rubbish not even deserving to eat Obama's fecal matter that he leaves excreted in the toilet and which you save in your refrigerator.
NICE TRY TO BUMP UP YOUR KARMA. Quit replying to trolls at the top of the page. We know that moderators waste their points on the first few posts, but this is ridiculous.
Re:I find it stimulating (Score:5, Insightful)
Except the more things you have to concentrate on and worry about at once, the lower your attention span becomes.
Re:I find it stimulating (Score:3, Insightful)
I bet it works the same way as exercise: if you do a lot of sprints, you'll build fast-twitch muscles and become better at sprinting, while if you do marathons you'll instead build slow-twitch muscles and become better at marathon-running. Similarly, concentrating on one thing for a long time makes you better at concentrating while multitasking makes you better at multitasking.
I don't think this is all that revolutionary of a concept, by the way...
Hahaha...you are a troll! (Score:1, Insightful)
The mods took the point and modded you down. Better luck next time, you pompous moron.
actually somewhat true (Score:5, Insightful)
A disproportionate number of top universities, relative to population, are in rural areas and small towns: Ithaca, New York; Urbana-Champaign, Illinois; Hanover, New Hampshire; Durham, North Carolina; Terre Haute, Indiana; etc.
Many of those that do find themselves in large cities were actually founded way out in the countryside, too, but have since been swallowed---Columbia was sort of in the middle of nowhere in far-upper Manhattan, most of the Boston universities are in Cambridge rather than Boston proper, Stanford was way off from San Francisco, Caltech was considerably outside Los Angeles, etc.
Re:OMG, how badly informed are they? (Score:3, Insightful)
I know for 15 years, that the brain entered a transformation 50-60 years ago
you seem to think there is some sort of global blueprint on which all brains are based, and this global blueprint was somehow altered 50-60 years ago.
Just try and think about it for a second. That idea is complete bullocks.
*cough* price of land *cough* (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:I find it stimulating (Score:3, Insightful)
Anecdotally, I just went away for a week and camped by a creek surrounded by trees. I went from being really stressed and unable to concentrate to being relaxed and focused. Co-workers have all commented on how healthy and happy I look and yesterday I did a days work in half a day, I'm sure because everything seemed so easy.
As a comparison, last time I took a week off, I stayed in town and got back to work about the same as when I left.
So I think this good exercise/stimulation argument is bollocks. If you are out in the ocean and have to tread water to stay afloat, does the continuous work make you better and staying afloat? Short term, say over a few hours, sure. Long term, absolutely not.
Try a short holiday, even a weekend, surrounded by green, peace and quiet. You will see what I mean.