Experiments: Density Factors and Well-being

A growing body of neurourbanistic research has shown that people living in urban areas suffer more often from mental and physical chronic illnesses compared to their rural counterparts. Despite clear identification of these drawbacks of city living for wellbeing, the specific ways in which urban factors impact health outcomes remain poorly understood.

At the Technische Universität Berlin’s  Berlin Mobile Brain/Body Imaging Lab (BeMoBIL), the project team puts the "neuro” in Neurourbanism and conducts experimental research on how different urban density factors, as well as other urban factors like greenery, influence subjective stress experience. 

A focus also lays on investigating methodological implications of neurourbanistic research. The first study used an online protocol and remote eye-tracking technology to investigate the appraisal of realistic urban stimuli extracted from street view material. Two different quantification methods of urban factors, one coarse categorical approach (i.e., high/low density; absent/present greenery) and another more fine-grained approach using machine learning-powered algorithms for continuous quantification on the same data, demonstrated that the commonly employed categorical operationalization approaches lead to different results and oversimplify complex urban environments. (Sander et al., 2024)

A girl walking on the street with a portable EEG cap that tracks her brain activity.

A study participant wearing an EEG cap during a mobile data recording in the city. (Image: Christian Kliemann)

A literature review from the group also demonstrated the challenges in previous neurourbanistic research concerning the application of (mobile) electroencephalography (EEG) and proposes best practice guidelines for future research, assuring replicability and good scientific rigor. (Gramann, 2024)

A replication of the previous online protocol is currently in progress in the lab, this time including the psychophysiological measures EEG, electrocardiogram (ECG), electrodermal activity (EDA), and eye tracking to obtain more objective measures of stress and learn more about the cognitive processes underlying urban scene appraisal. The multimodal data will be analyzed using integrative analysis approaches, including heartbeat-evoked potentials and fixation-evoked potentials.

Heat map of a street in Berlin based on stress levels tested on participants.

Example of an online experimental task where participants rated urban scenes with mapped eye gaze data.