When nature calls: The importance of restroom design to support cognition

It is possible that an often-overlooked space in building design is among the most important in supporting cognition: the restroom. In rat studies, a neural mechanism known as replay has been linked with learning and planning, and occurs during certain wakeful pause behaviors including defecating. If, like rats, the human brain is also wired to replay, then optimizing behavioral and environmental conditions – such as toileting and restroom design -- could foster cognitive benefits. Replay is dependent on external environmental conditions, and is supported when surrounding sensory stimuli are not demanding attention. Thus, replay may be facilitated environmentally by pairing wakeful pauses with environments conducive to supporting a defocused, internal processing state. Because nature-like features have been linked with guiding similar wakeful offline states such as defocused attention and mind-wandering, using nature in restroom design may help foster important cognitive mechanisms during toileting by facilitating replay through a supportive sensory experience. This paper aims to highlight to the impact of the environment on neural mechanisms with implications for researched-informed design. In this example, the restroom is one key space which lends itself to benefitting from research-informed design guidelines as the evidence base grows.

Impairments in Mental Model Construction and Benefits of Defocused Attention

In this article, we examine the hypothesis that cognitive deficits in subclinical depression become especially evident in tasks that require the integration of piecemeal information into more coherent mental representations, such as mental models. It is argued that in states of subclinical depression, attempts at integrative thinking or problem solving are limited by cognitive exhaustion which prevents the use of effective cognitive strategies. This basic argument is illustrated by paradigms addressing the construction of mental models based on sentiment or linear order information. It is shown that subclinical depression is associated with a distinct deficit in integrative reasoning, but no deficits in non-integrative processing such as initial information sampling or memory retrieval. Recent evidence of a neurophysiological correlate of this specific deficit in subclinical depression is discussed in terms of the moderating role of frontal alpha asymmetry, and in terms of a specific pattern of parietal brain activation during processing of mental models. Also, a distinctive, not deficit-related, facet of depressed cognitive symptoms is proposed, indicating a possible adaptive value of defocused attention in subclinically depressed mood. This defocused attention approach is supported by experimental and eyetracking research, and by recent theoretical models and empirical evidence showing performance benefits in depression for some cognitive and creative tasks.

The Therapeutic Process in the Religious Context

The article is based on selected findings from a study in the field of rehabilitation in a religious context viewed from the perspective of cognitive psychology and psychology of religion. The study shows how a therapeutic process can be facilitated in cases where the psychotherapeutic intervention is co-ordinated with a creative, sound religious activity. One central phenomenon that emerged from the study was the experience of a therapeutic dialogue with the divine person God and/or Jesus being apprehended as a crucial therapeutic agent. The material is analysed focusing on criteria for creative persons and products. A basic mechanism of creativity is hypothesised by Martindale (1991) to be defocused attention. The greater the spread of the attention capacity, the more likely the combinational leap, giving the rich possibility of combining elements in new ways. Religion can extend the perspective and thereby increase the possibilities of finding new and appropriate emotional and cognitive combinations. The analysis shows significant creative qualities in the treatment model studied.