It had been said that a person’s home is their castle, but it turns out that it may entail more than just a place to lay their head. As seen recently on Oprah, the blending of art and science has given rise to the hot new field of neuroarchitecture, which emphasizes the significant influence that our living environment has on both our psychological and physical well being.

Our relationship with our surroundings is hardly new, as evident by the fact that we tend to gravitate to more inviting and pleasing spaces, especially where natural settings (i.e., trees, grass and streams) are involved. Furthermore, it is a generally accepted fact that our exposure to light, especially sunlight, can have a profound influence on our state of mind.

So in a way, it really makes perfect sense that similar consideration be given to our homes, and that’s where the field of neuroarchitecture comes in. Neuroarchitecture seeks to define and understand the relationship between our psychological state and the artificial structures in which we spend most of our time and incorporate that insight into their design.

Though its initial focus was on schools, hospitals, and prisons, experts in the field have become increasingly interested in the artificial environment that we spend most of our time in: our homes. It is here that the overall design can have a significant effect on our moods and by extension, our health. In fact, attention to these details has been found to have a positive impact on patients suffering from Alzheimer's disease.

The scientific goal of neuroarchitecture is to gain a better understanding of the relationship between emotions and design by observing our responses and measuring the relevant regions of the brain, including the cerebral cortex, which registers and expresses emotions, the hippocampus, which is responsible for memories, and the hypothalamus, which receives messages from other parts of the body.

Neuroarchitecture then seeks to use that information to improve upon our surroundings by creating more “happy spaces” where such qualities as location, brightness, layout, and overall space play an important role. With this in mind, even a little messiness is good if it makes a space more comfortable and inviting, though it might not be so easy to convince your spouse of this.

In the end, the overall goal here is to encourage designers to take into account the emotional needs of their clients rather than simply focusing all their attention on functionality and design. A large part of this simply boils down to maximizing the visual cues that confer a sense of place and ultimately bestow a building with the important qualities that make it more than just a house, but a home.

For more information, check out the website of the Academy of Neuroscience for Architecture, and whenever possible, spend as much time as you can in happy spaces.