Functional brain imaging and population-level visits to urban spaces

Abstract

Urbanization is increasing worldwide, and neuroscience research can be conducted to better understand our behavior within, and the effects of, urban environments. In line with this, we conducted a neuroimaging study to ascertain whether brain activity in a small sample of individuals can predict population-level visits around an urban space—in our case, Lisbon, Portugal. We used the density of photographs around Lisbon as a proxy measure of these visits, obtaining 160 geotagged images from the social media platform Flickr to use as stimuli. Participants in the USA who had never visited Lisbon viewed these images while we recorded their brain activity. We found that activity within the ventromedial prefrontal cortex predicted the density of photographs around Lisbon, and hence, population-level visits. Our results highlight the role of reward-related brain regions in shaping human behavior within urban environments and can aid in designing cities that promote sustainable living. As the world urbanizes, we need better understanding of how urbanization and urban environments affect people cognitively. This study uses human brain activity, assessed using functional magnetic resonance imaging, to predict the number of visits to various locations within Lisbon, Portugal, when exposed to geotagged images from Flickr.