Posted on 10/13/2012 9:27:53 PM PDT by neverdem
Scientists are testing the idea that the stress of modern city life is a breeding ground for psychosis.
In 1965, health authorities in Camberwell, a bustling quarter of London's southward sprawl, began an unusual tally. They started to keep case records for every person in the area who was diagnosed with schizophrenia, depression, bipolar disorder or any other psychiatric condition. Decades later, when psychiatrists looked...
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Yet the results of his study, published last year in Nature (F. Lederbogen et al. Nature 474, 498–501; 2011), clearly showed that people who grow up in cities process negative emotions such as stress differently from those who move to the city as adults. His team scanned the brains of 55 healthy volunteers as they carried out arithmetic tasks under a constant bombardment of negative social feedback. “We'd always let them know through headphones that we thought they were failing, or at least not doing as well as other subjects we'd had in the scanner,” says Meyer-Lindenberg. “In one set of experiments we let them see our impatient faces on computer screens.”
This social stress activated two brain areas — but the pattern depended on the volunteers' histories of urban living. The amygdala, which processes emotion, showed much greater activity in people who were currently living in a city. And the cingulate cortex, which helps to regulate the amygdala and processes negative emotion, responded more strongly in those brought up in large cities than in those brought up in the countryside, irrespective of where they lived now. Meyer-Lindenberg thinks that this over-responsiveness to stress could make city-dwellers more prone to psychiatric conditions such as schizophrenia — and his results chime with the idea that stress in childhood or adolescence can have a lasting effect on the brain's development and increase susceptibility to psychiatric disease...
(Excerpt) Read more at nature.com ...
Nothing new, it’s been observed for centuries.
...and what political ideology mostly resides within cities ?
Causation makes correlation.
I try keeping my brain locked down better than Obama’s history. Sometimes things do slip, but it’s every now and then, and I’m easily able to regulate the flow of emotions out.
An extremely easy fix would be going away from NYC, while keeping constant contact with friends.
Racist! Right-winger!
(if I need a /sarc tag for that...)
THOSE HORRIBLE BAD EVIL 1%EERS IN THERE GILDID MANSHUNS AND FANSY PENT HOUSIS !!!!!!!! .......RITE????????????
*wipes flecks of saliva off screen*
solution: urban voters only allowed a half vote - we could call it the ‘crazy differential’
The biggest problem with large cities here in the U.S. is they are run by DemocRATS. From what I understand, large cities in the Orient in places such as Singapore, Japan and Malaysia are modern wonders to behold. Of course, they don’t have Greenie whack jobs and RAT politicians to contend with. My cousin John lived in Singapore. He said the cities here in the U.S. are 3rd world compared to the Orient.
I remember a NOVA presentation on PBS (when I was a teenager) based on crowded cities and their effect on people.
They used rats in gradually over-populated cages—stress producing “environment”—they kept adding rats.
Eventually, the rats turned to extreme violence and cannibalism; can’t help but think of our larger cities now; filled with rats that eat the faces off the other rats.
Scientists are testing the idea that the stress of modern city life is a breeding ground for psychosis.
Have you ever met anyone from NYC that didn’t have issues?
It isn’t exactly news that urban societies are associated with higher rates of mental disorders.
There was a comic book series in the 1980s called Mister X that touched on this. Mister X was not a superhero, he was a brilliant and eccentric architect. He designed a city where every building, shape and line reinforced positive emotions and healthy psychological well being. He did not see the city built, but had a nervous breakdown and spent years in a mental hospital.
When he was released, he found that the city had been built in his absence. But not exactly the way he designed it. This city had the lines and shapes subtly changed. In stead of promoting happiness and positiveness, it reinforced psychosis, suicide, and mental illness. All of its residents were slowly and deliberately being driven insane.
The character spends the city looking for the people who built the city, and the secret of why it was changed.
Ah, so in other words, that has the very same psychosis causing effect as approvingly telling them 24/7 dat dey BEEEE somebody and aren't to blame for their own failed socio-economic station in life. Because the first version these researchers tested has almost NOTHING to do with the price of tea in China.
Interesting results. Probably done by a liberal prof.
But what would be really interesting to know is whether the liberal prof thinks that the liberal sustainable development plan to herd everyone out of the suburbs and into big buildings in cities so that the animals can run free (or whatever their reasoning is) is a good idea.
I can tell you that country people are better adjusted and far less silly than city people. And I’ve been in both places.
I have met very few people from any major city I would not consider to be more than a bubble off of level...
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