A group of 77 subjects who had never been to Lisbon before were put in fMRI scanners, shown a series of photographs taken in the city, and were asked to rate them. Using the information gathered by this experiment, the scientists hope to predict the itineraries of visitors.

“Sometimes researchers will interview 10, 20, or 50 people, to speculate on the behaviour of an entire population”, Bruno Miranda, a neurologist from the University of Lisbon who’s in charge of the project, told The Portugal News. “Instead, we’re doing that using data taken from the brain.”

“This is something that has been done in other fields, so it’s not necessarily new from that perspective, but it’s new in the way that we’re using this to support the planning of cities”, he elaborated. The initiative is part of a much larger programme called “The eMOTIONAL Cities Project”, funded by the European Commission under Horizon 2020, and aims to incorporate neuroscience into the study of urbanism.

Proof of concept

The photographs used in the experiment were sourced from the social media platform Flickr, where users can upload images including geolocation tags. These were compiled by a team at the University of Lisbon’s Institute of Geography and Spatial Planning, led by Paulo Morgado, and then organised onto a map of the city.

They noticed some spots had more photos taken of them than others, keeping track of how many times each location had been captured. “We speculate that these are places people visit more often because others have shown this relationship”, Bruno noted.

So, does this hypothesis match what was seen in the fMRI data? The answer appears to be yes. “When we show the images of Lisbon”, he explained, “their brain activity in certain regions correlated with the pictures where there were more photographs being taken by a large group of people”.

“On one hand, the motivation was to show that neuroscience could help improve the planning of spaces for mental health and wellbeing”, Bruno recounted. “But to be a little more specific on how this particular experiment fits into this overall project, I would say, that this is a proof of concept.”

“The interesting thing is that we started collecting data in the US, but we also did the same in Portugal”, he continued. “This dataset does not include our Lisbon participants, but it will soon. We ran some analyses and we find that it’s very similar, the same brain region that processes rewards also activated in Portuguese people.”

“Now, we’re focusing on seeing if whether or not it’s the same source of information that provides this particular reward activation”, Bruno added. “What we believe is that maybe people that live in the city of Lisbon have much stronger memories of these places and have very different links to them, but we want to see more in-depth if the brain activates in different patterns to then have this final value computed.”

The team has noted that both groups have positive reactions to the photographs in their fMRI scans, but wants to determine whether it’s due to the same innate reaction to the stimuli or if it’s also helped by the subjects’ personal connections to the locations.

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Blending neuroscience with urban planning

This initiative was spearheaded by three figures, those being Bruno Miranda, Paulo Morgado, and Dar Meshi, a neuroscientist at Michigan State University. “It was mostly Dar who brought this idea forward, and then Paulo and myself just helped with the implementation and marking sure this aligned with the project”, referring to “The eMOTIONAL Cities Project”, of which Bruno and Paulo are co-coordinators.

Bruno Miranda used to work as a doctor in clinical trials, but found it hard to do meaningful work there. “I realised there was a lot of logistics that was required to do good clinical studies, so we would have needed a lot of infrastructure to compete with the high quality medical centres.”

Eventually, he took the decision to shift his studies elsewhere, and so moved to the field of basic neuroscience, specialising in the processes which guide decision-making and learning in humans and animals. “I exploited computational models, so I studied a lot of maths and how these models explain behaviours, then I came back to medicine because I also had a passion for medical work, and that’s when this project started.”

“Many of the complaints from my patients are things that are from their daily lives. My concerns when I prescribe something is do they see an effect on memory and such, but then they come and say things like I can’t do this now because near my place I can’t walk or this or that”, Bruno emphasised the toll the local environment was taking on his clients. “That’s more or less why I feel interested in pursuing this route, it’s been quite a rewarding idea and a lot of people are asking for this.”

“People should be more demanding, in a sense that society has to start asking for more of this data, for more evidence instead of public debates and questionnaires”, he expressed. Miranda gave the example of an experiment where pedestrians were asked about their discomfort towards two streets, one featuring a brief noise classified as “very uncomfortable” and the other suffering from constant noise pollution. In this experiment, he found that people were more bothered by the first street, despite the second street posing more serious long-term risks to their health.

“There’s a lot of hidden information, and I think society in general should be start thinking more, at least for this particular field of urban planning and design. What we’re building in this city lasts sometimes for centuries, so we really have to be demanding to make sure we have the best information available, to force the decision makers to give us justifications with evidence, because a lot of the justifications lack evidence”, Bruno concluded. “We need to start asking for more science to be applied in our daily context.”

Author

A journalist that’s always eager to learn about new things. With a passion for travel, adventure and writing about this diverse world of ours.

“Wisdom begins in wonder” -  Socrates

Kate Sreenarong