The new EU funded project coordinated by two of the Faculties of the University of Lisbon, the Institute of Geography and Spatial Planning (IGOT) and the Faculty of Medicine (FMUL) had its Kick-off on 13 April. The parents of this new consortium are professors and researchers Paulo Morgado, from IGOT and Centre for Geographical Studies and Bruno Miranda, from FMUL and a neurologist at Santa Maria Hospital.
In view of the need to keep up with the growth of today's cities and to build them according to those who live in them, it is urgent to understand what influences urban planning may have on the population or what biological and cognitive effects people may have on the environment where they live. These are the guidelines of the most recent study “eMOTIONAL Cities - Mapping the cities through the senses of those who make them.
We met one of the researchers behind the project and attest to the real contribution that our Medical School can make to a project that proves to be ambitious and demands an unprecedented multidisciplinarity. At 39 years of age, Bruno Miranda is more than a neuroscientist, he is also the father of 3 kids and says it with a smile. On the professional side, he assumes himself as a walker between two worlds: clinical practice (neurology) and basic research (neuroscience). His attention is divided between the time he dedicates to his family and the hours he dedicates to his career. Between teaching and research, Bruno Miranda always has a common denominator: the study of the brain, his area of choice.
His academic path has been unusual. He did an Erasmus mobility Paris, the general internship in England, and it was during the Doctoral Programme in Neurosciences of the Champalimaud Foundation in the London Institute of Neurology at the University College of London, that his interest in the computational area and the mathematical models associated with the analysis of human behaviour aroused.
Was it based on your computational experience that you decided to embrace this eMOTIONAL Cities project?
BM: Not really. This opportunity came almost out of nowhere. It all started when Professor Paulo Morgado (IGOT) approached the Faculty of Medicine, through Professor Ferro, from the Neurology Service, who invited me to attend a meeting with representatives of the Institute of Geography and Spatial Planning (IGOT). Despite considering my participation as a fluke, I soon identified many interconnections and the opportunity to take science to another, more humane, level. Then, the relationship with Professor Paulo Morgado also flowed very naturally. Almost immediately, we started to exchange many views about the potential of neurosciences framed in the vision of this project.
Can we conclude that what moves you in this project is the contribution of neurosciences, as an area to be explored, that can act as a support base for EMOTIONAL Cities?
BM: Yes. It is curious, because the main alert for the relevance of neurosciences happened in conversation with my wife. When I shared the genesis of the project with her, she said: “Look, this could be a very funny idea!”. Until then, all my conversations with her about research ended in silence (Laughter). This reaction on her part made me understand that my contribution to this project could bring some impact to society. In fact, I feel that I do not fit into either purely basic or purely clinical research (with all the inherent advantages and disadvantages). And the association with the topic of urban planning allows me to do something that fits my modus operandi: to establish bridges. And, of course, it can also be a valuable help to guide me in navigating the city of Lisbon, since I usually get a bit lost (Laughter).
What is the biggest contribution of the Faculty of Medicine to this project?
BM: As an Institution, we have an interesting potential as we have a medical community, in the area of neurology, and a very strong group of basic neurosciences in iMM, with great capacity and know-how, perfectly capable of adapting the clinical practice and research to the needs of our partners. Nowadays, there is a lot of talk about Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence, but in fact the most important thing is the use of these tools - they must be really useful for those who use them.
And what tools are these?
BM: Basically, analysis tools that allow us to leverage well-being factors, such as mobility and transport, among others, to health issues and thus support the most vulnerable populations.
Would our country, and the other countries included in this study, have the initiative to map cities according to the senses of their residents, if it were not for the encouragement of international guidelines? In your opinion, are we piggy backing on the European Union?
BM: It's a good question! These clusters are a new approach by the European Commission and group together key themes. In the past, there were many similar projects that ended up not being related. Therefore, the idea of the cluster is quite positive, since it gathers all existing information on certain topics in one place. With regard to consortia, it is a way of creating synergies between countries. As a working group, we are interested in having new and different perspectives. It is a way that the European Commission has found to extend various topics to all countries, but without forgetting the particular needs of each one. Let's look at the case of Denmark. In terms of mobility, it is a country that currently needs to expand its bike lanes to a highway format. As for us, we are only now taking the first steps in the construction of cycling paths. We are clearly at a stage of lower need, yet the issue of mobility and movement through cities is a common theme. I wouldn't say we piggy back. It is important to have a strategic vision and having someone to show us the way is not necessarily a bad thing. The European Commission is very focused on knowing the needs and interests of each country. Is it something forced? Yes, but in a good way.
How is it that the residents' emotions are central to this project?
BM: Most of the time, the construction of cities does not take into account the interests/ needs of its residents, according to experts in the mapping and structuring of cities. This alert came from the urban planning area. It was based on the contacts that I had that I started to realize that there are many cities, whose construction and growth is centred on services, on the adequacy of mobility. Making the traffic flow more smoothly towards the centre, where the workplaces are located or later to the residential areas. What really seems to fail is the human appreciation of space. The fact that we facilitate access to services does not mean that the person is happier in the city. For many authors, this has been an important aspect. In order to be able to support policy makers to implement intuitive, sustainable and intelligent measures for people, it is important to understand how the brain reacts, as it allows us to have emotions and make decisions. If we can understand how the machine behaves, it will be easier for us to understand the causal relationships. There is a lot of work done in the area of epidemiology, but always centred on a very populational, social aspect, of the relationship between health indicators, but little connected to the biology of the human being.
At this stage that we are going through, the practice of physical exercise on the street has gone viral. In the case of Lisbon, we are quite privileged to have green areas that allow us to exercise outdoors, but what about security issues? Is there, in your opinion, much to be done?
BM: There is a lot to be optimized, this is precisely what we want to explore: what is there to improve? This is an area that captures the attention of the European Union, which is why the creation of this cluster is closely linked to the topic of Environmental Health. As for the city of Lisbon, on a more personal level, it is a city that has very good conditions, not only because it has some green areas, but also due to its proximity to the sea. The pandemic only reinforced the need for well-being when in contact with nature. Here, our role will be to see how, within all the complex dynamics of everyday life, we manage to improve all aspects of the lives of residents in cities: physical exercise, mobility, lighting, security, for all levels. We have a great challenge in our hands.
Reading the Press-Release of the project's launch session, I realised that EMOTIONAL Cities also proposes to reduce urban inequalities. There are certainly some groups that feel marginalized in the cities or not so included, namely women, homosexuals or patients with motor and cognitive difficulties. Will they all be considered in the study?
BM: Yes. I think that there is a lot to do. Above all, the way the research in the most basic neurosciences, where I feel most comfortable, can contribute to addressing issues such as security and mobility. And, in fact, there is not much work done in terms of perceiving gender differences. I am not an expert, but I would say that cities have always had a construction that favours the male sex. My goal is to be able to gauge how a man reacts to a particular place compared to a woman and try to identify the places that trigger an anxiety or fear stimulus in people with a view to improving these areas using more lighting, enlargement of walks, etc... So, if we manage to obtain these stimuli, it is already an advantage.
Regarding other vulnerable groups, we used the group of patients with mild cognitive impairment, because we think it is an interesting group. On the one hand, it has not lost the capacity for functional autonomy, on the other, it already reveals some complaints that can be framed in the pre-disease stage, in this case pre-dementia. The project challenges cities to meet one of their future needs: ageing. How will future cities be able to provide an age group, increasingly prevalent in our society, a well-being that can be different from younger and healthier groups.
This is what makes this association with urban planning so interesting, because the results can tell us that we do not need to act on all levels of the city equally. Having everything georeferenced allows us to adapt to the needs of each niche of the population, and support stakeholders to make decisions on higher priority topics.
And the brain then becomes an incredible tool...
BM: Completely. The brain, as the processor of this information, will allow us to build models. Admitting that there are always differences between brains, but that we all have a relatively close biological root, it will allow us to use these models to simulate what might happen when we have future scenarios. Unlike epidemiological studies, it will enable us to build future perspectives. Imagine having 1000 or 10,000 brains evaluating a change, imagine the variability of emotions, what would be the results of that change? One of our tasks is precisely to gather all that information to predict what may happen. We want to understand the reactions of the people analysed, through the observation of different scenarios, with the objective of always supporting the most vulnerable population.
How is the team going to do that? Will it be through volunteers? Questionnaires? What is the research methodology?
BM: It is a difficult question, because the methodology will vary over the various phases of the work and focus adopted by each group. Initially, we will do a literature review, use systematic reviews and meta-analyses. Then, in an evaluation component of the urban space, more in charge of specialists in the field of urban planning, we will resort to surveys and focus groups. We will also recruit volunteers to install and use an application for the mobile phone, which aims to monitor the types of transportation that the volunteers use. Through that app. we will challenge the users with questions to assess the area where they are.
This is precisely one of the reasons why the dissemination of the project is so important. We want to invest on a great movement of citizen-based research - research based on the opinion of the citizens resorting to very specific methodologies.
With regard to the area of neuroscience, one of the greatest contributions on our part will be the use of technology to help us study the human brain. With the support, in particular, of Functional Magnetic Resonance. Most likely, we will be able to take advantage of the investment that FMUL has made in this type of technology. In addition to MRI, we will also use the electroencephalogram, because MRI is very good when it comes to spatial resolution, but we need to collect data on temporal sequences.
We need to understand the emotions of the volunteers at all times, as they move around the various areas of the city. In this sense, the electroencephalogram is better, as it gives us a more accurate temporal and local view. Finally, we will also try to use physiological sensors, which assess the heart rate variability, because the brain is not an isolated entity. As our body is a global and systemic entity, all these answers help us to understand what the user's emotions are at the time.
What is the minimum number of volunteers you need?
BM: It depends a lot. There is no magic number. In terms of participants in street experiments, we are aiming at 80 to 100 participants, perhaps even more if we can. These experiments will take place in various urban spaces, in four different cities. So, logistically, there will have to be some juggling to be done here, combining environmental factors such as snow, in the Nordic countries, or periods of rain, in which it is difficult to carry out these experiments. We have to consider all these factors when we think about setting certain types of goals. For laboratory experiments, we don't need as many people, we may only need 20 to 30 people, depending a lot on what our questions will be. The questions are not yet closed. We have, of course, guidelines, which have been discussed with our partners, but the details will have to be further fine-tuned.
Ambitious, discerning and multidisciplinary, EMOTIONAL Cities promises to challenge the senses not only of the people who live in the cities, but also of their political decision-makers, not to mention the vast team that embraces this challenge with such different and complementary knowledge. The contribution of neurosciences is the responsibility of Professor Bruno Miranda, in a new scientific approach that allows him to do what he likes best: to open new horizons!
Isabel Varela
Editorial Team