Soundtracking your life!
Most of us have ears that work OK most of the time—there’s the occasional ear infection or very bad cold, but that is a passing thing, at least generally. So what’s best to hear...
Choosing the Right Plant
Plants inside can be great—when they’re around our minds and our bodies work well—our cognitive performance and creativity go up, we get along better with other people, our stress levels fall—the list goes on...
How heat affects our brain….
We talk regularly about the best temperatures for our minds (about 70 to 72 degrees Fahrenheit (depending on your clothes, what you’re doing, etc.) , with 40 to 70% humidity, as reviewed here), but...
What does your topiary say about you?! Creating spaces for “who you are”….
Humans feel great when they’re in a place that they think conveys who they are and what’s important to them—and also when they’re in spaces that seem to clearly tell other people’s stories—something we’ve...
Design nerds take note!
Recently,we’ve gotten access via photographs to two interesting spaces: the chambers of the US Supreme Court (https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/06/27/us/supreme-court-chamber-photos.html) and the room that British royals are in just before they step onto the famous balcony, the...
Using technical or famiiliar names impacts our perception of something….
Tok and colleagues determined that “using the scientific name of a major ingredient enhances product evaluations when the product is perceived as utilitarian, whereas using the common name for that ingredient has a positive...
More benefits of Biophilic Design
Szewranski, Mrowczynska, and van Hoof’s work verifies the value of biophilic design. They share that “the concept of biophilia has made its way into the built environment, for instance, through the introduction of natural...
Scenes seen and Tastes Tasted!
Wu, Li, and Spence confirm that what people are looking at and what they taste are related: “Compared to the urban condition, perceived aroma, freshness, fruitiness and pleasantness [of samples of orange juice] were...
Being good to the earth and happiness
Prinzing’s work indicates that “green” behaviours and positive moods are related. He describes a study he recently completed: “A 10-day experience-sampling study (7,161 observations from 181 adults in 14 countries, primarily the United States)...
Temperature and Thinking! The hotter it is….
Keivabu and Widmann found that “hot [out of comfort range] days reduce politicians’ language complexity, but not cold days. . . . Our data consists of all parliamentary speeches in Washington D.C. (United States,...
Unseen Forces – Part 1 – Sound
‘Tis the season for invisible forces. With Midsummer’s eve and good weather sitings of all sorts of gnomes and fairies, the unseen can be top of mind. In this issue we won’t talk about...
Unseen Forces – Part 2 – Scents
Sure, we can often see the source of a scent a flower, a piece of fruit, etc., but smells themselves don’t have any forms we can see with the naked eye. We are particularly...
Unseen Forces – Part 3 – Tastes
Tastes are much more physically present than sounds or smells, something does indeed rest on your tongue and produce a particular sensation, but tasting is what is known as a “chemical” sense, like smelling....
Work in Water
It’s wild swimming season, so lots of us are spending tons of time in water about now—but working water into our lives year-round is a very, very good idea. • Humans have a special...
Singing in the Rain…. Negative ions are good for us!
There’s more and more research indicating that negative ions in the air influence what happens inside our heads. Derek Brockway (2024, https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c51157ep524o) in “How Rain Can Make You Happier and Healthier,” reports, for example,...
Why do we need Music?
Music seems to be, literally, everywhere we go, from down into the Tube to the park to Carnegie Hall. In a recent article in The New York Times (2024, “Why Do People Make Music?...
Workplace location, how it affects productivity and creativity
Arata and Kawakubo found that “productivity in simple tasks increased with the frequency of working from home. . . . improving the residential environment, including temperature and humidity control, is critical to enhance productivity...
Why Garden when you’re older?
A research team lead by Corley share that “Gardening in later life was associated with greater gain in cognitive change from age 11 to 79. . . . Higher gardening frequency was associated with...
Foraging, and relative creativity…
Malaie and team link different sorts of foraging behaviour to creativity: “According to accounts of neural reuse and embodied cognition, higher-level cognitive abilities recycle evolutionarily ancient mechanisms for perception and action. . . ....
A shout out for Nature!
Amy Thomas, in “Why ‘Biophilia’ Needs to be Part of Your Next Holiday” (2024, BBC Online,https://www.bbc.com/travel/article/20240502-why-biophilia-needs-to-be-part-of-your-next-holiday) encourages people to improve their mental health by spending time outside—something that we talk about a lot here...
We eat healthier when we see nature… another “Biophilic” effect!
Via 5 experiments Langlois and Chandon learned that “individuals exposed to the natural environment choose healthier foods when compared to those exposed to urban environments or a control condition. Nature’s effects are observed for...
Nature connection and schooling… Biophilic Design and improved cognitive performance!
You and colleagues report, after a virtual reality-based study, that “the addition of biophilic elements in the Metaverse could benefit [young adult] students’ health due to significantly decreased perceived stress levels and increased connections...
Nature is Good for our HEALTH – it could save £108.7million!
Grellier and teammates report that “Physical activity (PA) reduces the risk of several non-communicable diseases (NCDs). Natural environments support recreational PA. . . . Population-representative data from the Monitor of Engagement with the Natural...
Kids, Trees and ADHD
Buczylowska and team share that they “examined the association between lifelong exposure to greenspace and ADHD diagnosis and potential underlying mechanisms (i.e., perceived greenspace, PA [ physical activity], neighbourhood social cohesion, and neighbourhood safety)...
Finding your way and playing video games
Yavuz and colleagues link playing video games and successfully navigating from one place and another. They “investigated the effect of video game experience and reliance on GPS on navigation ability using the mobile app...
Can Nature Heal Inflammation?
Ong, Cintron, and Fuligni link pleasant time spent in nature to lower inflammation levels: “Leveraging survey and biomarker data from 1,244 adults (mean age = 54.50 years, range = 34–84 years) from the Midlife...
Our perception of “Real” differs from person to person…
Pang’s work confirms how complex our relationship is with our world. As Pang reports “We experience only our brain’s internal representation of the outside world, which is limiting in two main ways. First, we...
Designing for Beyond-Now Thinking – THE LONG READ
Here at The Space Doctors we generally keep what we talk about in the here and now, but we do acknowledge the importance of all of our spiritual lives and how much practices like...
Designing for Sleep
We all need to sleep the amount that’s best for us and when we don’t spend as much time in Dreamland as our body requires all of our mental processes are compromised—we aren’t very...
We need Privacy….
Any human older than a toddler needs to be able to have privacy when they choose—privacy is not an option for our mental wellbeing. When we have privacy, we have control over who can...
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