CEN Kolloquium: How the Built Environment Affects Spatial Behavior, Brain Activity and Aesthetics

The talk will present our research team's work on how the structure of the environment affects wayfinding behaviour. It will cover our research with Sea Hero Quest, in which we found growing up in griddy cities has a negative impact on navigation behaviour, as well as research with London taxi drivers on how the environment affects how they plan. In the second part I will cover our recent research in neuroarchitecture, exploring brain responses (fMRI) as participants watch movies of pleasant or unpleasant built environments, and crowd dynamics in a study of 100 people navigating a fabricated large-scale art gallery (The 100 Minds in Motion Project).

Hugo Spiers is professor of cognitive neuroscience and a vice dean for enterprise at University College London (UCL). He has over 25 years of research experience in neuroscience and psychology studying how our brain recalls the past, navigates the present and imagines the future. He has published over 100 academic articles and received numerous awards including the Charles Darwin Award from the British Science Association and a James McDonnell Foundation Scholar Award. He is co-director of the International Centre for NeuroArchitecture and NeuroDesign, a Fellow of the Royal Institute of Navigation, a Lighthouse Fellow of the Centre for Conscious Design and the Vice Chair of the Academy of Neuroscience for Architecture in the UK. His research project Sea Hero Quest has tested over 4 million people in 195 nations on their navigation ability, providing a powerful benchmark for assessment in Alzheimer's disease and global insight into cognition.

To join remotely: https://mpib-berlin.webex.com/mpib-berlin/j.php?MTID=maff3dee0ad54cb921191ff33d0b92347

Meeting number: 2744 645 6180

Password: ArpQMePJ352