As heard on NPR’S HIDDEN BRAIN with Shankar Vedantam

If you live in a big city, you may have noticed new buildings popping up — a high-rise here, a skyscraper there. The concrete jungles that we've built over the past century have allowed millions of us to live in close proximity, and modern economies to flourish.

But in this shift to an increasingly urbanized society, are we missing something important?

For more than 30 years, psychologist Ming Kuo has studied the effects of nature on humans. She came to this field of research not from an interest in greenery, but from a fascination with crowding and noise — the negative impacts of urban environments.

Read more or listen to the podcast above.