Neural correlates of individual differences in affective benefit of real-life urban green space exposure

• Published in: Nature neuroscience Vol. 22; no. 9; pp. 1389 - 1393
• Main Authors: Tost, Heike, Reichert, Markus, Braun, Urs, Reinhard, Iris, Peters, Robin, Lautenbach, Sven, Hoell, Andreas, Schwarz, Emanuel, Ebner-Priemer, Ulrich, Zipf, Alexander, Meyer-Lindenberg, Andreas
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: New York Nature Publishing Group US 01-09-2019; Nature Publishing Group
• Subjects: 59/36; 631/378; 631/477; 692/699; Adolescent; Adult; Affect - physiology; Affective disorders; Affective Symptoms - epidemiology; Animal Genetics and Genomics; Behavioral Sciences; Biological Techniques; Biomedical and Life Sciences; Biomedicine; Brain - physiology; Brief Communication; Cities; Cities - epidemiology; Diagnosis; Emotions; Exposure; Female; Health aspects; Humans; Individuality; Influence; Male; Mental health; Morbidity; Neurobiology; Neurosciences; Open spaces; Parks, Recreational; Risk factors; Smartphones; Statistical analysis; Stress; Urban areas; Urban ecology; Urban planning; Urban Population; Vegetation; Young Adult; Young adults; Cities
• ISSN: 1097-6256; 1546-1726
• DOI: 10.1038/s41593-019-0451-y

Psychiatric morbidity is high in cities, so identifying potential modifiable urban protective factors is important. We show that exposure to urban green space improves well-being in naturally behaving male and female city dwellers, particularly in districts with higher psychiatric incidence and fewer green resources. Higher green-related affective benefit was related to lower prefrontal activity during negative-emotion processing, which suggests that urban green space exposure may compensate for reduced neural regulatory capacity.
Tost et al. show that urban green space exposure improves well-being, particularly in people dwelling in relatively deprived areas and showing less prefrontal activity during emotion processing, a neural signature that is linked to mental health risk.