Psychology

Barbara Brown is an environmental psychologist who studies connections between human behavior and the built environment, including processes supporting walkability, walking, Complete Streets, place attachment, and neighborhood viability.
David Strayer studies cognition in the wild, namely how the brain behaves in a non-digital world. It is well documented that the modern digital world places unique pressures on our cognitive abilities and levels of stress, and this is only likely to increase in the future. This raises the important question of what we can do to maintain a high level of cognitive function and quality of life, and also benefit from the positive influences of technology. Our prior work found that immersion in the wilderness absent modern technology significantly improved creative reasoning and other higher-order cognitive abilities. The goal of our current research is to develop a better understanding of the biological bases underlying cognitive restoration associated with being in natural settings (and also to understand the potential negative consequences associated with being overconnected in the digital world).