How the City Hurts Your Brain

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.'"

Comments

Re:Quiet room

[DuncanE]

I didnt tick Anonymous?????

Doubt It

[dcollins]

There was a thread a few weeks ago about "stretching before exercise reduces muscle power". Oh noes! I feel like this article is very analagous.

I'm a musician/mathematician, birthed-college in rural Maine, 10 years game engineer in Boston, moved to New York 3 years ago. I've never been more delighted about where I live, and my only regret is that I didn't move here years ago (largely due to family/friends saying terrible things about NYC, turns out that's all mythology). I'm far more rested than I was before -- I could ditch the car, not get stressed out driving every day, nap on the bus/train every day, and arrive at work refreshed and energetic. I have a regular (late) sleep cycle for the first time in my life.

I feel far more intellectually stimulated and productive now than before. I'm also gotten enormously more efficient, and the city does challenge me to improve my productivity on that score. Like a lot of athletic/professional coaches will say, or the old article "How to Win a Nobel Prize", you've got to be challenged in order to improve. Surround yourself with a lot of people smarter/faster than yourself (in my case, the college where I teach and the music industry), and you will get better.

I consider the "urban street" part of my life to be the mental exercise part. I consider the "rural holiday" part to be the rest-heal-the-muscles part. You need both. If you measure muscles immediately after exercising, you will look weak and fatigued, but it's an essential part of growing stronger. Same here.