How our environment shapes our cognition? The cultural and geographical aspects of our environment influence our cognition and mental health.

Living near green spaces has been found to be strongly beneficial to our health, and urban residence has been associated with a higher risk of some psychiatric disorders.

However, how the environment in which one grew up affects later cognitive abilities isn’t very clear.

To answer this, in a recently published study, scientists used a cognitive task embedded in a video game to measure the navigation ability in roughly 400,000 people from 38 countries across the world.

The scientists in this study found that people were better at navigating in virtual environments that were similar to the environments in which they grew up in.

Specifically, growing up in cities with an organized street network led to better results at video game levels with a regular layout, whereas growing up outside cities or in cities with a less organized street network led to better results at more irregular layouts in the video game levels.

This effect, which is stable across lifespan, and is not affected by gender or age, suggests that humans develop navigation strategies that are aligned with the type of environment they are exposed to, which become suboptimal in other environments.

This provides evidence of the effect of the environment on human cognition on a global scale, and highlights the effects of urban design on human cognition and brain function.

Link to original study:
[ Ссылка ]

Image credits:
Photo by cottonbro: [ Ссылка ]
Photo by Tom Fisk: [ Ссылка ]
Photo by Chiper Catalin: [ Ссылка ]
Photo by Burst: [ Ссылка ]
Photo by Phyo Hein Kyaw: [ Ссылка ]

свернуть