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Neuro-urbanism & Neuro-landscape

A new term has officially been introduced in the scientific world – NEUROURBANISM.  It happened together with the  publication in Lancet in Psychiatry in March 2017 [link here].  City life has a lot to do with the psychiatric conditions , and this is the path we have been following in NeuroLandscape as well.

Our cities are growing and we know: City life influences our behavior, our emotions and our psychological well-being. The brain of an urban dweller reacts differently to social stress than that of a rural dweller. Whether this is also the reason for the aggregation of some stress sequelae in cities is a question that we want to answer with Neuro-Urbanism, a new discipline assembling neurologists, urban researchers and architects. 

-Dr Mazda Adli, Director of the Mood Disorders Research Group at the Charité Berlin and Head of the Fliedner Klinik Berlin

We are happy to get involved with the development of this new discipline in regard to urban nature, and the quality of urban environment. We are looking forward to join forces and connect with the interdisciplinary forum of Neurourbanism in Germany.

 

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Healthy Landscape Workshop, NTU, Taipei, Taiwan

It was a delightful and very interesting stay in Taipei, Taiwan.  We went to visit “Healthy Landscapes x Healthy People Lab” ran by Prof Chun-Yen Chan, after he invited us during the IFLA conference in Singapore (networking works wonders!).  Me and Nicolas were happy to join the 2 hour sharing session and the workshop organized at the Department of Horticulture and Landscape Architecture of the National Taiwan University.

    

We got to know all students and researchers involved in the Healthy Landscape x Healthy People Lab, to find out, that their research is so much connected to what we are doing or willing to do at NeuroLandscape.  The range of topics was impressive: from investigating of the soundscape to creative design process, using very rigorous methods including fMRI scans, biofeedback instruments among others.

Finally the talk of Professor Chang, who is clearly the heart and good spirit of his team, brought us through key findings and ongoing research in the area. It was great to share our mission, activities and scientific approach with like-minded people and find the world’s hot-spot for research on landscape design and health.

We would like to share more findings and activities from Prof Chang’s lab, and find ways to collaborate in the future. Thank you so much for having us at NTU!