The impact of walking in different urban environments on brain activity in older people

Chris Neale,Peter Aspinall,Jenny Roe,Sara Tilley,Panagiotis Mavros,Steve Cinderby,Richard Coyne,Neil Thin,Catharine Ward Thompson

doi:10.1080/23748834.2019.1619893

Abstract

ABSTRACTNeurourbanism looks to understand the relationship between urban environments and mental well-being and is well placed to assess the role of these environments on the urbanised and ageing global population. This study builds on research using mobile electroencephalography (EEG) to understand the impact of urban environments (busy, quiet and green urban spaces) on brain activity. Ninety-five older participants aged over 65 years undertook one of six walks in an urban neighbourhood, transitioning between two distinct environmental settings. This study explores changes in alpha (associated with relaxation) and beta (associated with attention) brain activity recorded during walking in differing urban environments. Neural activity significantly varies as participants walk between urban busy and green settings, with reduced levels of low beta activity in the green setting, suggesting attention changes consistent with Attention Restoration Theory. Levels of alpha activity significantly varied between the urban busy and the urban quiet settings, with increases in the urban busy setting. There were no significant differences in EEG activity between the urban green and urban quiet settings, suggesting that the magnitude of environmental contrast between the urban busy context and other urban settings is an important factor in understanding the effects of these spaces on brain activity.

Highlights

In the context of a need to better understand the role that urban environments play in human health, there is a well-established literature demonstrating that preferences exist for viewing natural scenes over urban scenes (Velarde et al 2007), and this effect is evident across different cultures (Takayama et al 2014, Conedera et al 2015)
Note: A positive value above zero indicates levels for that parameter are greater in the first part of the walk and a negative value below zero indicates levels for that parameter are greater in the second part of the walk
Undertaking this research could perhaps lead to identification of neural signatures associated with the experience of different kinds of urban spaces by age and cognitive state, which in turn would be useful for designers of public spaces and residential environments, as well as for policy-makers and health practitioners to understand any beneficial or detrimental effects of urban spaces on an ageing population. These results add to the growing evidence regarding neural change associated with viewing or experiencing changing urban environments. This is the first time, to the authors’ knowledge, that a mobile EEG project has been undertaken on a group of this size, and on older adults, to understand the effects of walking in the real urban environment using raw EEG data

Summary

Introduction

In the context of a need to better understand the role that urban environments play in human health, there is a well-established literature demonstrating that preferences exist for viewing natural scenes over urban scenes (Velarde et al 2007), and this effect is evident across different cultures (Takayama et al 2014, Conedera et al 2015). Natural scenes are associated with increased activation in the frontal gyrus, precuenus and anterior cingulate while the urban scenes induce increased activation in a network including the hippocampus, amygdala and inferior frontal gyrus (Kim et al 2010a). The authors suggest that distinct environments induce distinct networks of neural activation and that these activations are related to the participants’ memory (hippocampus) and emotional responses (amygdala) to the given environment. Further fMRI research has suggested that this relationship could be mediated by life experience and place preferences (Kim et al 2010b) with increased activation in hippocampal and parahippocampal regions, associated with memory function (Vargha-Khadem et al 1997, Tulving and Markowitsch 1998), as well as the amygdala, associated with emotional processing (Rasia-Filho et al 2000, Phelps and LeDoux 2005), during viewing of urban scenes

Results

Discussion

Conclusion