Complexity As Key to Designing Cognitive-Friendly Environments for Older People

Designing environments that contribute to a reduction in the progression of Parkinson's disease; a literature review

Parkinson's Disease (PD), a prevalent neurological disorder, causes physical difficulties like stiffness and impaired walking and affects patients' emotional well-being. Regular exercise and exposure to enriched environments are crucial to managing these symptoms. This review aims to extract evidence from studies regarding built environments' impact on reducing the progression of PD. Keywords from 2005 to 2022 were used in five databases, including PubMed, Clarivate Web of Science, UGA Library, and Google Scholar. Many studies emphasized physiotherapy and training for physical enhancement, often utilizing virtual games and smart devices. Others highlighted the advantages of non-slip flooring and accessible outdoor spaces, with some based on universal design principles. Few studies considered the emotional impact of built environments, showing a considerable gap in the studies simultaneously evaluating psychological and physical perspectives of Parkinson-friendly environments. There needs to be more consistency when considering these aspects of planning. Our findings suggest future research modeling enriched environments and tracking their impact on patients via Virtual Reality to find a comprehensive guideline for the most effective PD management environments.

How do drivers mitigate the effects of naturalistic visual complexity? : On attentional strategies and their implications under a change blindness protocol

How do the limits of high-level visual processing affect human performance in naturalistic, dynamic settings of (multimodal) interaction where observers can draw on experience to strategically adapt attention to familiar forms of complexity? In this backdrop, we investigate change detection in a driving context to study attentional allocation aimed at overcoming environmental complexity and temporal load. Results indicate that visuospatial complexity substantially increases change blindness but also that participants effectively respond to this load by increasing their focus on safety-relevant events, by adjusting their driving, and by avoiding non-productive forms of attentional elaboration, thereby also controlling "looked-but-failed-to-see" errors. Furthermore, analyses of gaze patterns reveal that drivers occasionally, but effectively, limit attentional monitoring and lingering for irrelevant changes. Overall, the experimental outcomes reveal how drivers exhibit effective attentional compensation in highly complex situations. Our findings uncover implications for driving education and development of driving skill-testing methods, as well as for human-factors guided development of AI-based driving assistance systems.

Toward explainable AI-empowered cognitive health assessment

Explainable artificial intelligence (XAI) is of paramount importance to various domains, including healthcare, fitness, skill assessment, and personal assistants, to understand and explain the decision-making process of the artificial intelligence (AI) model. Smart homes embedded with smart devices and sensors enabled many context-aware applications to recognize physical activities. This study presents XAI-HAR, a novel XAI-empowered human activity recognition (HAR) approach based on key features identified from the data collected from sensors located at different places in a smart home. XAI-HAR identifies a set of new features (i.e., the total number of sensors used in a specific activity), as physical key features selection (PKFS) based on weighting criteria. Next, it presents statistical key features selection (SKFS) (i.e., mean, standard deviation) to handle the outliers and higher class variance. The proposed XAI-HAR is evaluated using machine learning models, namely, random forest (RF), K-nearest neighbor (KNN), support vector machine (SVM), decision tree (DT), naive Bayes (NB) and deep learning models such as deep neural network (DNN), convolution neural network (CNN), and CNN-based long short-term memory (CNN-LSTM). Experiments demonstrate the superior performance of XAI-HAR using RF classifier over all other machine learning and deep learning models. For explainability, XAI-HAR uses Local Interpretable Model Agnostic (LIME) with an RF classifier. XAI-HAR achieves 0.96% of F-score for health and dementia classification and 0.95 and 0.97% for activity recognition of dementia and healthy individuals, respectively.

What Do Local People Really Need from a Place? Defining Local Place Qualities with Assessment of Users' Perceptions

China is facing a serious urban regeneration issue in which replicable international-style locations are losing their socio-cultural adaptability, especially in anonymous residential neighbourhoods. This study defines the key location qualities from local literature and then refines these qualities through observation investigations and statistical analysis (n = 180) to establish links between theories and contemporary uses. Based on the results, a correlation analysis of local place qualities was assessed from users' perceptions (n = 180) to identify the interactional influences between each indicator of local place qualities. Finally, local place qualities were scored to address their level of impact on users' perceptions. The results highlighted health, enjoyment, and social dependence as the most concerning factors in site investigations based on local cognitions. They are strongly associated with key local place qualities (naturality, functionality, cosmological cognitions, and interdependent sociability), directly and indirectly resulting in different levels of impact on users' perceptions at different scales.

Human Auditory Ecology: Extending Hearing Research to the Perception of Natural Soundscapes by Humans in Rapidly Changing Environments

Research in hearing sciences has provided extensive knowledge about how the human auditory system processes speech and assists communication. In contrast, little is known about how this system processes "natural soundscapes," that is the complex arrangements of biological and geophysical sounds shaped by sound propagation through non-anthropogenic habitats [Grinfeder et al. (2022). Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution. 10: 894232]. This is surprising given that, for many species, the capacity to process natural soundscapes determines survival and reproduction through the ability to represent and monitor the immediate environment. Here we propose a framework to encourage research programmes in the field of "human auditory ecology," focusing on the study of human auditory perception of ecological processes at work in natural habitats. Based on large acoustic databases with high ecological validity, these programmes should investigate the extent to which this presumably ancestral monitoring function of the human auditory system is adapted to specific information conveyed by natural soundscapes, whether it operate throughout the life span or whether it emerges through individual learning or cultural transmission. Beyond fundamental knowledge of human hearing, these programmes should yield a better understanding of how normal-hearing and hearing-impaired listeners monitor rural and city green and blue spaces and benefit from them, and whether rehabilitation devices (hearing aids and cochlear implants) restore natural soundscape perception and emotional responses back to normal. Importantly, they should also reveal whether and how humans hear the rapid changes in the environment brought about by human activity.

Residential trajectories across the life course and their association with cognitive functioning in later life

Previous work has found that later life urban-rural differences in cognitive health can be largely explained by indicators of cognitive reserve such as education or occupation. However, previous research concentrated on residence in limited, specific, periods. This study offers a detailed investigation on the association between urban (vs. rural) residence from birth, and cognitive functioning in older age. Using data from the Survey of Health Ageing and Retirement in Europe we created residential trajectories from birth to survey enrolment with a combination of sequence and cluster analysis. Using mixed-effects models, we investigated the association between residential trajectories in early, mid, and later life and three cognitive functioning outcomes: immediate recall, delayed recall, and verbal fluency. In a sample of 38,165 participants, we found that, even after accounting for differences related to education and occupation, rural (vs. urban) residence in early life remained associated with poorer cognitive performance later in life. This suggests that growing up in rural regions leads to a long-term disadvantage in cognitive functioning. Thus, public health policies should consider that urban-rural inequalities in early life may have long-lasting associations with inequalities in cognitive health in old and very old age.

A Systematic Review with Framework Synthesis of the Ways That Urban Environments Influence Opportunities for Healthy and Sustainable Mobility in Older Age

Supporting older people's use of sustainable transport is important for both population health and sustainable development, especially in the context of global population ageing. This systematic review identifies individual and environmental factors that influence older people's sustainable transport use and synthesises findings using a framework approach. Factors influencing older people's walking (n = 10 studies), bus use (n = 11), community transport use (n = 1), bicycling (n = 1), and e-bicycling (n = 1) were found to be physical, geographical, facility-based, economic, time-based, fear-based, space-based, information-based, or interpersonal. Many factors were common across transport modes. One reason for this is that environmental features designed to facilitate the use of one particular transport mode also influenced the use of other modes (e.g., bus shelters influence not only bus use but also walking as they provide pedestrian seating). Thus, environments need to be considered from the perspective of multiple, different types of road users. Another reason is that many factors related to the ways individuals experienced their environment (e.g., finding information guiding behaviour in public spaces to be unclear), regardless of any specific transport mode. This review highlights the important need for greater cross-sectoral action and input from older people.

On the Quantification of Visual Texture Complexity

Complexity is one of the major attributes of the visual perception of texture. However, very little is known about how humans visually interpret texture complexity. A psychophysical experiment was conducted to visually quantify the seven texture attributes of a series of textile fabrics: complexity, color variation, randomness, strongness, regularity, repetitiveness, and homogeneity. It was found that the observers could discriminate between the textures with low and high complexity using some high-level visual cues such as randomness, color variation, strongness, etc. The results of principal component analysis (PCA) on the visual scores of the above attributes suggest that complexity and homogeneity could be essentially the underlying attributes of the same visual texture dimension, with complexity at the negative extreme and homogeneity at the positive extreme of this dimension. We chose to call this dimension visual texture complexity. Several texture measures including the first-order image statistics, co-occurrence matrix, local binary pattern, and Gabor features were computed for images of the textiles in sRGB, and four luminance-chrominance color spaces (i.e., HSV, YC_bC_r, Ohta’s I₁I₂I₃, and CIELAB). The relationships between the visually quantified texture complexity of the textiles and the corresponding texture measures of the images were investigated. Analyzing the relationships showed that simple standard deviation of the image luminance channel had a strong correlation with the corresponding visual ratings of texture complexity in all five color spaces. Standard deviation of the energy of the image after convolving with an appropriate Gabor filter and entropy of the co-occurrence matrix, both computed for the image luminance channel, also showed high correlations with the visual data. In this comparison, sRGB, YC_bC_r, and HSV always outperformed the I₁I₂I₃ and CIELAB color spaces. The highest correlations between the visual data and the corresponding image texture features in the luminance-chrominance color spaces were always obtained for the luminance channel of the images, and one of the two chrominance channels always performed better than the other. This result indicates that the arrangement of the image texture elements that impacts the observer’s perception of visual texture complexity cannot be represented properly by the chrominance channels. This must be carefully considered when choosing an image channel to quantify the visual texture complexity. Additionally, the good performance of the luminance channel in the five studied color spaces proves that variations in the luminance of the texture, or as one could call the luminance contrast, plays a crucial role in creating visual texture complexity.

An analytical pathway of consumption expenditure with neighborhood deprivation and depression on cognitive health among elderly in India: A moderated mediation approach

BACKGROUND

This study aims to find the linkage between neighborhood deprivation and cognition with depression as a mediating factor while economic condition as a moderator.

METHODS

We have used the recent baseline wave-1 data of Longitudinal Aging Study in India (LASI), 2017-2018. The study was restricted to 60 and above population, consisting of males (14,931) and females (16,533). We have used moderated mediating model to understand the relationship between deprivation (X), cognition (Y) mediated through depression (M), moderated by economic condition (W), while controlling all possible confounders.

RESULTS

Neighborhood deprivation was positively associated with depression (β: 0.12; SE: 0.01) and inversely linked to cognition (β: -0.4; SE: 0.02). Deprivation had a strong indirect effect on cognition that was mediated by depression. Further, interaction of depression (M) and economic condition (W) was negatively associated (β = -0.03; SE: 0.01) with cognition (Y), indicating that lower economic section being more depressed with lower cognitive function.

LIMITATIONS

The study failed to capture other mental health aspects like stress and anxiety using the Depression, Anxiety and Stress Scale-21 items (DASS-21).

CONCLUSIONS

This study has found a link between higher economic condition with low deprivation and depression. Older individuals with better financial situation have improved cognitive level than their counterparts, who are also depressed. This study provides an opportunity to conduct future research on cognitive health in the face of population aging in India.

Urban and rural environments differentially shape multisensory perception in ageing

Recent studies suggest that the lived environment can affect cognition across the lifespan. We examined, in a large cohort of older adults (n = 3447), whether susceptibility to a multisensory illusion, the Sound-Induced Flash Illusion (SIFI), was influenced by the reported urbanity of current and childhood (at age 14 years) residence. If urban environments help to shape healthy perceptual function, we predicted reduced SIFI susceptibility in urban dwellers. Participants reporting urban, compared with rural, childhood residence were less susceptible to SIFI at longer Stimulus-Onset Asynchronies (SOAs). Those currently residing in urban environments were more susceptible to SIFI at longer SOAs, particularly if they scored low on general cognitive function. These findings held even when controlling for a several covariates, such as age, sex, education, social participation and cognitive ability. Exposure to urban environments in childhood may influence individual differences in perception and offer a multisensory perceptual benefit in older age.

Environmental Features Influence Walking Speed: The Effect of Urban Greenery

The study investigated the rarely addressed topic of how visual environmental features can influence walking speed. Young adult participants were asked to walk on a route that leads through areas composed of urban parks and areas with a built environment with a large amount of greenery. Their walking speed was measured in selected sections. The participants walked with a small video camera, and their walk was recorded. The temporal information was derived from the video recordings. Subsequently, the participants evaluated the environmental features of the route by specific spatio-cognitive dimensions of environmental preference. The results show that walking speed in specific sections of the walking route systematically differed and reflected the environmental features. The walking speed was lower in sections with high natural characteristics and a high environmental preference. Noise here was perceived as less annoying than in sections with lower natural characteristics. The results are explained in terms of approach avoidance behavior. The findings are in accordance with environmental preference research that documents various benefits of walking in the natural environment.

Can Motion Graphic Animation About Snakes Improve Preschoolers' Detection on Snakes? A Study of Inattentional Blindness

This study created a motion graphic (MG) animation about the danger of snakes within a story telling structure, which is different from a traditional science animation that relies on explanatory language to explain the scientific concept. The effects of the two types of animations on children's attentional perception on snakes were compared by an inattentional blindness (IB) task. Three groups of children undertook the IB task with one control group who did not watch the animation and the other two groups who watched the MG and the traditional styled animation, respectively in advance. The results showed that: (1) Children who watched the animation were significantly more likely to detect the unexpected snake images in the IB task than those who did not watch the animation; (2) Children who watched the MG animation showed a higher detection rate on the snake images than those who watched the traditional animation. The findings indicate that the intervention of animation would increase children's attentional perception on the key concepts significantly. The MG animation has more impact than the traditional animation on children's attentional perception on the key information. This study demonstrates that MG animation may have a significant value in promoting science education for young children that merits further explorations in depth.

Neighbourhood Environment and Cognitive Vulnerability—A Survey Investigation of Variations Across the Lifespan and Urbanity Levels

Background: Understanding the impact of local communities on wellbeing is a paramount Sustainable Development Goal. In order to inform people-centred planning interventions, it is important to understand what demographic groups need supportive communities the most and where. This study explored associations between perceived neighbourhood characteristics and cognitive vulnerability, and the moderating role of age and urbanity of the place of residence. Methods: A convenience sample of 224 Irish adults completed a survey assessing cognitive vulnerability and perceptions of neighbourhood qualities, together with sociodemographic and residential information. Correlational analyses explored bivariate associations as well as moderating effects. A subsample (n = 142) provided qualitative accounts of their preferences of neighbourhood characteristics. Results: Regression analyses showed that controlling for sociodemographic factors, higher self-reported neighbourhood pleasantness was associated with lower cognitive vulnerability, particularly in older adults who lived in the most rural and urban areas (p = 0.006). Qualitative accounts suggested urban–rural variations in perceived accessibility and perceptual stressors, and age-related variations in social preferences. Conclusions: Our findings indicate a complex association between neighbourhood characteristics and cognitive wellbeing, highlighting the potential benefits of neighbourhood pleasantness for cognition particularly for older people in very rural or very urbanised places. Implications for research and environmental interventions are discussed.

The effect of music on the perception of outdoor urban environment

Music may modify the impression of a visual environment. Most studies have explored the effect of music on the perception of various service settings, but the effect of music on the perception of outdoor environments has not yet been adequately explored. Music may make an environment more pleasant and enhance the relaxation effect of outdoor recreational activities. This study investigated the effect of music on the evaluation of urban built and urban natural environments. The participants (N = 94) were asked to evaluate five environments in terms of spatio-cognitive and emotional dimensions while listening to music. Two types of music were selected: music with a fast tempo and music with a slow tempo. In contrast with a previous study by Yamasaki, Yamada & Laukka (2015), our experiment revealed that there was only a slight and not significant influence of music on the evaluation of the environment. The effect of music was mediated by the liking of music, but only in the dimensions of Pleasant and Mystery. The environmental features of the evaluated locations had a stronger effect than music on the evaluation of the environments. Environments with natural elements were perceived as more pleasant, interesting, coherent, and mysterious than urban built environments regardless of the music. It is suggested that the intensity of music may be an important factor in addition to the research methodology, individual variables, and cultural differences.

Individual and neighbourhood socioeconomic inequalities in cognitive impairment: cross-sectional findings from the French CONSTANCES cohort

OBJECTIVES

Despite the recent awareness of the environment impact on brain ageing, the influence of the neighbourhood socioeconomic status on cognitive impairment remains unclear. Here, we investigated the effects of individual and neighbourhood deprivation on cognitive impairment in middle-aged and young-old people.

DESIGN

Cross-sectional study.

SETTINGS

21 Health Screening Centres in the entire French metropolitan territory.

PARTICIPANTS

A total of 44 648 participants (age range: 45 to 69 years) from the French CONSTANCES cohort were included in the analyses.

MAIN OUTCOMES

Associations between the overall cognitive score (based on a standardised battery of cognitive tests administered by neuropsychologists) and individual deprivation (Evaluation of Deprivation and Inequalities in Health Screening Centres; EPICES score) and geographical deprivation (French Deprivation Index; FDep index).

RESULTS

Based on the EPICES score (validated cut-off ≥30.17), 12% of participants were considered to be deprived. After mutual adjustment, individual and geographical deprivation were associated with higher cognitive impairment in a multilevel logistic regression analysis that was also adjusted for sociodemographic, lifestyle and health factors. Specifically, individual deprivation was associated with an odds increase of 55% (OR=1.55, 95% CI: 1.45 to 1.66). The risk of global cognitive impairment progressively increased with the neighbourhood deprivation level, evaluated by the FDep index (reference Q1; Q2: OR=1.09, 95% CI: 0.98 to 1.20; Q3: OR=1.15, 95% CI: 1.04 to 1.27; Q4: OR=1.15, 95% CI: 1.04 to 1.28; Q5: OR=1.25, 95% CI: 1.13 to 1.39).

CONCLUSION

Our results suggest that the neighbourhood socioeconomic deprivation level is associated with cognitive impairment, independently of the individual deprivation level. A better understanding of this association could help to define new prevention strategies to target high-risk residents and high-risk geographical areas in order to reduce social health inequalities.

Public Transportation Use and Cognitive Function in Older Age: A Quasiexperimental Evaluation of the Free Bus Pass Policy in the United Kingdom

In this quasiexperimental study, we examined whether the introduction of an age-friendly transportation policy-free bus passes for older adults-increased public transport use and in turn affected cognitive function among older people in England. Data came from 7 waves (2002-2014) of the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing (n = 17,953), which measured total cognitive function, memory, executive function, and processing speed before and after the bus pass was introduced in 2006. The analytical strategy was an instrumental-variable approach with fixed effects, which made use of the age-eligibility criteria for free bus passes and addressed bias due to reverse causality, measurement error, and time-invariant confounding. Eligibility for the bus pass was associated with a 7% increase in public transport use. The increase in public transportation use was associated with a 0.346 (95% confidence interval: 0.017, 0.674) increase in the total cognitive function z score and with a 0.546 (95% confidence interval: 0.111, 0.982) increase in memory z score. Free bus passes were associated with an increase in public transport use and, in turn, benefits to cognitive function in older age. Public transport use might promote cognitive health through encouraging intellectually, socially, and physically active lifestyles. Transport policies could serve as public health tools to promote cognitive health in aging populations.

Young-Old City-Dwellers Outperform Village Counterparts in Attention and Verbal Control Tasks

Cognitive performance is dynamic and shaped by individual biological and environmental factors throughout life. In psychology, besides the effects of age, education, and other often studied factors, the complexity of the lived-in environment and urbanicity in that context are yet to be elucidated. In this observational cross-sectional study, we compare cognitive performance in standard neuropsychological tests in healthy older persons from three different types of settlements in the Czechia: the capital city of Prague, towns, and villages. The groups were equal in terms of the age-band (60–74 years), the distribution of gender, education, past and current leisure activities, and cognitive health status (MMSE score). The results showed that Prague citizens had consistently better performance in all verbal tests (for memory and verbal control, i.e., executive function) and attention than persons from other areas. The groups did not differ in timed visuo-graphomotor performance. The conclusion is that the complex environment of a city may promote, in the long-term, certain cognitive abilities, distinguishable even in a developed, culturally homogenous country. The implications are: (a) the description of samples used in normative studies should include information on the lived-in environment for the reference of researchers and clinicians; and (b) individual clinical assessment should reflect the role of the patient’s environment where appropriate. The exact mechanisms and causes of the differences need further investigation.

Cognitive and Sensory Dimensions of Older People's Preferences of Outdoor Spaces for Walking: A Survey Study in Ireland

BACKGROUND

Physical exercise, particularly walking, benefits healthy ageing. Understanding the environmental circumstances in which exercise occurs is crucial to the promotion of physical activity in older age. Most studies have focused on the structural dimensions of environments that may foster walking; however, individual differences in how older people perceive and interact with outdoor spaces need further attention. This study explored the cognitive and sensory dimensions of preferences of outdoor spaces for walking.

METHODS

We invited 112 healthy community-dwelling people aged ≥60 years to complete a survey to test associations between walking preferences and cognitive/sensory vulnerability. A subsample also completed focus groups/walk along interviews to explore qualitatively the cognitive/sensory reasons for outdoor walking preferences.

RESULTS

While most participants indicated a preference for outdoor spaces that offer variety and greenery, we observed a complex association between individual cognitive/sensory needs (stimulation seeking vs. avoidance), preferences for social interactions, and the place of residence urbanity level. Furthermore, walking preferences varied based on the purpose of the walk (recreation vs. transportation).

CONCLUSIONS

Our findings support an ecological approach to understanding determinants of physical activity in older age, which consider the interaction between individual cognitive processing and the environment.

Visual Complexity and Affect: Ratings Reflect More Than Meets the Eye

Pictorial stimuli can vary on many dimensions, several aspects of which are captured by the term 'visual complexity.' Visual complexity can be described as, "a picture of a few objects, colors, or structures would be less complex than a very colorful picture of many objects that is composed of several components." Prior studies have reported a relationship between affect and visual complexity, where complex pictures are rated as more pleasant and arousing. However, a relationship in the opposite direction, an effect of affect on visual complexity, is also possible; emotional arousal and valence are known to influence selective attention and visual processing. In a series of experiments, we found that ratings of visual complexity correlated with affective ratings, and independently also with computational measures of visual complexity. These computational measures did not correlate with affect, suggesting that complexity ratings are separately related to distinct factors. We investigated the relationship between affect and ratings of visual complexity, finding an 'arousal-complexity bias' to be a robust phenomenon. Moreover, we found this bias could be attenuated when explicitly indicated but did not correlate with inter-individual difference measures of affective processing, and was largely unrelated to cognitive and eyetracking measures. Taken together, the arousal-complexity bias seems to be caused by a relationship between arousal and visual processing as it has been described for the greater vividness of arousing pictures. The described arousal-complexity bias is also of relevance from an experimental perspective because visual complexity is often considered a variable to control for when using pictorial stimuli.