Southwest Doctoral Training Programme (SWDTP) - working title: Comparing methods of exposure to urban environments and their effect on enhancing menta

心理健康是公共卫生的一个主要问题。全球有近10亿人受到精神障碍的影响(IHME，2017)。研究表明，生活在自然界对精神健康有很大好处(世卫组织，2019年)，这可能对行动不便的人群特别有利，如老年人或体弱者(Yeo等人，2019年)。注意力恢复理论认为，自然环境具有积极的心理结果，包括补充直接注意力和减少压力(Kaplan，1995)。然而，随着83%的英国人口生活在城市地区(DEFRA，2019年)和全球城市化趋势的增长(Ritchie和Roser，2018)，有必要了解如何优化城市环境以促进心理健康。研究发现，城市环境对幸福感有负面影响(Krefis等人，2018年)，但Bornioli等人(2018年)的研究表明，接触历史和现代城市环境也可以有益于幸福感。该研究项目正在通过让参与者观看不同城市环境的视频来进一步研究这一问题。这项实验设计评估了绿色与非绿色、现代与历史环境对福祉的影响。在视频期间，记录主观状态(问卷)的变化，以及包括脑电(EEG)或其他心理生理测量(例如，电活动/EDA、心率变异性/HRV)的生理测量。建议的方法成本相对较低，可广泛使用，并有可能应用于提高普通人群的福祉。这项博士提案有三个目标：(A)确定最佳的城市环境，使沉浸式虚拟现实(IVR)与现实生活具有类似的好处；(B)探索利用这种技术和刺激造福行动不便的老年人口的潜力；以及(C)试验虚拟现实干预对这一群体的有效性。

Mental wellbeing is a major concern for public health. Globally, almost 1 billion people are affected by mental disorders (IHME, 2017). Research shows that being in nature can be of great benefit to mental wellbeing (WHO, 2019) and this may be of particular benefit to populations with limited mobility, such as the elderly or infirm (Yeo et al., 2019). Attention Restoration Theory posits that natural environments have positive psychological outcomes, including replenished direct attention and reduced stress (Kaplan, 1995). However, with 83% of the UK population living in urban areas (DEFRA, 2019) and urbanisation trends growing worldwide (Ritchie and Roser, 2018), there is a need to understand how urban environments could be optimised for mental health benefits. Research has found urban environments to have negative effects on wellbeing (Krefis et al., 2018), but research by Bornioli et al (2018) suggests that exposure to historic and modern urban environments can also benefit wellbeing. The research project is investigating this further by exposing participants to videos of various urban environments. The experimental design assesses the effects on wellbeing of environments that are green versus not green, and modern versus historic. During the videos, changes in subjective state (questionnaire), and physiological measurements including electroencephalography (EEG) or other psychophysiological measures (e.g. electroderamal activity/EDA, heart rate varuiability/HRV) are recorded. The proposed methods are relatively low cost, widely accessible and have potential applications for enhancing wellbeing in the general population. This PhD proposal has three aims: (a) to identify optimal urban environments which could confer similar benefits in immersive virtual reality (IVR) to real life; (b) to explore the potential to use such technology and stimuli for the benefit of elderly populations with limited mobility, and; (c) to pilot the effectiveness of a virtual reality intervention for this population.