社会学研究早已发现城市居民更易因压力大出现精神疾病，而一项最新科学研究又为此提供了证据，其结果显示，在面临压力时，常在城市生活者和常在乡村生活者的大脑会有不一样的反应。
英国《自然》杂志6月23日的封面文章说，德国海德堡大学等机构的研究人员进行了相关试验。32名学生志愿者参与了一项较难的数学测试，并且在测试过程中会从耳机里听到来自研究人员的负面消息，说他们的进度落后于平均水平，可能难以通过考试。在受试者处于这种压力较大的环境时，研究人员用磁共振成像技术探测了他们大脑中不同部位的活动情况。
结果发现，那些当时正生活在城市的学生，大脑中的杏仁核活动增强，而生活在乡村的学生没有出现这种情况；同时另一个名为扣带皮层的部位活动情况也与城市生活背景有关，在城市中生活时间越长，这个部位的活动就越强。由于杏仁核和扣带皮层的功能与负面情绪有关，“城市人”大脑的这种特点有助于解释为什么他们更易出现精神疾病。
由于城市生活涉及的各种因素复杂，开展本次研究的科学家计划和社会学家合作，通过跨学科的研究来探索究竟是哪些因素导致了大脑应对压力方式的变化。（生物谷Bioon.com）
生物谷推荐原文出处：
Nature doi:10.1038/nature10190
City living and urban upbringing affect neural social stress processing in humans
Florian Lederbogen; Peter Kirsch; Leila Haddad; Fabian Streit; Heike Tost; Philipp Schuch; Stefan Wüst; Jens C. Pruessner; Marcella Rietschel; Michael Deuschle; Andreas Meyer-Lindenberg
More than half of the world’s population now lives in cities, making the creation of a healthy urban environment a major policy priority1. Cities have both health risks and benefits1, but mental health is negatively affected: mood and anxiety disorders are more prevalent in city dwellers2 and the incidence of schizophrenia is strongly increased in people born and raised in cities3, 4, 5, 6. Although these findings have been widely attributed to the urban social environment2, 3, 7, 8, the neural processes that could mediate such associations are unknown. Here we show, using functional magnetic resonance imaging in three independent experiments, that urban upbringing and city living have dissociable impacts on social evaluative stress processing in humans. Current city living was associated with increased amygdala activity, whereas urban upbringing affected the perigenual anterior cingulate cortex, a key region for regulation of amygdala activity, negative affect9 and stress10. These findings were regionally and behaviourally specific, as no other brain structures were affected and no urbanicity effect was seen during control experiments invoking cognitive processing without stress. Our results identify distinct neural mechanisms for an established environmental risk factor, link the urban environment for the first time to social stress processing, suggest that brain regions differ in vulnerability to this risk factor across the lifespan, and indicate that experimental interrogation of epidemiological associations is a promising strategy in social neuroscience.
