In an era of lightning-fast AI development, human cognition, the mental processes of our brains, is facing a fundamental shift where the physical environment is becoming increasingly decisive.
- If AI gives us immediate access to a huge amount of knowledge, the question is what do we do with that knowledge? Creativity, for example, is a very explicit cognitive skill, but one that needs to be trained and practiced. The question is how we can create spaces and environments that allow us to best access those kinds of higher cognitive skills.
When artificial intelligence, AI, takes over routine data processing, the demands on us shift. Instead, our main strength becomes uniquely human abilities such as lateral thinking, creativity, problem solving and social cohesion. But for our mental capacity to be sufficient, a completely new focus is required on the rooms where we live and work. This is claimed by Cleo Valentine, researcher in neuroarchitecture at, among others, the Swedish research institute Rise and the universities of Harvard and Cambridge.
- How do we design the built environment in a way that supports people's health and well-being in all its forms? Everything from stress regulation to cognitive performance.
According to Cleo Valentine, we need to start considering human brain health and everyone's valuable brain capital as a strategic investment for communities and organizations, not just a health care issue.
Today we often see the opposite. Our modern lifestyle and built environment trigger constant, low-grade stress. Noise, invisible light flickering and poor acoustics stress the nervous system, which in turn entails enormous societal costs.
- Today we also see an absolute barrage of neurological diseases and I believe that the environments we have created play a huge role in this. The built environment is probably one of our most underutilized levers for public health. It affects us passively, no extra activity is required to feel the benefits or the harmful effects.
The environment also affects us directly cognitively. The human body evolved in a natural world characterized by specific mathematical patterns, such as fractals and the golden ratio. In artificial, modern environments that completely lack these patterns, significantly more energy is required for the brain's visual cortex to process visual impressions.
This creates an invisible cognitive load. A classic everyday example is when a driver instinctively lowers the volume of the car radio to be able to pocket park in a stressful situation.
- When a huge amount of energy is required to deal with the sensory impressions you receive in the moment, it takes away cognitive space that could have been allocated to other tasks. That makes it very difficult to focus and think laterally, notes Cleo Valentine.
To protect brain capital, measures are required in both the short and long term. Quick solutions are about eliminating light flicker, dampening noise and giving individuals the power to regulate their own impressions.
Cleo Valentine also sees a great need for new physical meeting places, such as creative labs, where people can gather to strengthen social cohesion in the wake of increased remote work.
In the longer term, changed building standards are required. Just as regulations were historically designed to prevent houses from collapsing, future urban planning must include neurological safety.
- People talk a lot about longevity, but more and more often we now talk about "health span", how long we actually live well. And our ability to cognitively engage with the world around us plays a huge role in that, says Cleo Valentine.
