Can Architecture Really Change the Way We Think? What New Research Says About Neuroarchitecture
Can the spaces around us influence perception, emotion, and cognition? A new 2026 systematic review maps 121 studies and reveals what neuroarchitecture can—and still cannot—tell us about the relationship between buildings and the human mind.
A room can be beautiful without being comfortable. A corridor can be perfectly functional and still make you want to leave. And sometimes a space that looks almost ordinary in a photograph feels completely different when you are actually standing inside it.
I have noticed this repeatedly in architecture.
When you draw a floor plan, everything seems measurable. There are dimensions, openings, walls, ceiling heights, furniture and circulation paths. But once someone enters the finished space, another layer appears—one that cannot be completely captured by the drawing.
How does the person feel inside it?
That question is one of the reasons neuroarchitecture has become so interesting.
But there is a problem.
The expression neuroarchitecture is sometimes used as if science has already figured out exactly how a room changes the brain. It hasn't.
A new systematic mapping review published in Frontiers in Psychology in September 2026 provides a useful reality check. The researchers mapped 121 studies published between 2015 and 2025 and found a field that is growing quickly, experimenting with increasingly sophisticated technologies, but is still far from having all the answers.
And, honestly, I think that makes the subject more interesting—not less.
Neuroarchitecture Is Growing, But the Science Is Still Being Built
Neuroarchitecture sits somewhere between architecture, environmental psychology, neuroscience and cognitive science.
The basic question is relatively simple:
What happens in the human mind and body when we experience a particular environment?
Researchers can investigate this in several ways.
They can ask people how they feel. They can observe how they behave. They can measure where they look. They can monitor electrical activity in the brain or physiological responses associated with arousal and attention.
The new review looked across these different approaches rather than treating one particular technology as the definition of neuroarchitecture.
The researchers searched Scopus and Web of Science, initially identifying 510 records. After removing duplicates and applying their inclusion criteria, they arrived at a final corpus of 121 studies. Of these, 61 were empirical studies involving human participants.
One detail immediately caught my attention.
The majority of the research is relatively recent.
The review found that 81 of the 121 studies—66.9%—were published between 2023 and 2025.
That tells us something important.
Neuroarchitecture is not a mature field with decades of settled conclusions. It is a rapidly developing research area.
What Do Researchers Actually Measure Inside a Space?
This is where the subject becomes much more interesting.
Among the 61 human empirical studies reviewed, researchers used a surprisingly wide range of methods.
Questionnaires and self-report measures appeared in 63.9% of the studies.
Behavioral tasks were used in 52.5%.
EEG, which records electrical activity in the brain, was also used in 52.5%.
Eye tracking appeared in 24.6% of studies, while electrodermal activity or galvanic skin response was used in 23.0%.
Other methods included heart-rate variability, fMRI and fNIRS.
That variety matters because our experience of architecture is not one-dimensional.
Imagine entering a room with a large window.
Your eyes may immediately move toward the outside.
Your body may respond to the brightness.
You may perceive the room as more open.
You may report that it feels pleasant.
And you may remember the room differently later.
These are related experiences, but they are not exactly the same thing.
That is why I am cautious whenever I see a statement such as “this architectural feature activates the brain's relaxation system.”
Sometimes there may be research behind the claim.
Sometimes there is only a plausible interpretation.
Those are not the same thing.
A Floor Plan Cannot Tell You Everything About a Room
This is something I have experienced directly through architecture.
A floor plan is indispensable. Without it, we cannot properly understand dimensions, circulation, relationships between spaces or construction requirements.
But the floor plan is not the experience.
Two rooms can have exactly the same area and still feel completely different.
One may reveal the entire space as soon as you enter. Another may give you a partial view, with something appearing only after you move a few steps.
One may have a direct visual connection to a garden.
Another may have the same window area but face a blank wall.
On paper, some of these differences can look relatively small.
Inside the building, they can become the entire experience.
That is why I believe architecture becomes particularly interesting when we stop thinking only about what a space contains and start asking what the space makes us notice.
The Brain Does Not Experience Architecture as a List of Dimensions
When we describe a room architecturally, we often break it into components:
- walls;
- floor;
- ceiling;
- windows;
- doors;
- lighting;
- furniture;
- materials.
But a person does not normally experience these elements separately.
We experience relationships.
A window changes the perception of a wall.
A dark ceiling changes the perception of height.
A narrow entrance can make the room beyond it feel more expansive.
A mirror can introduce another visual layer.
A partially hidden doorway can create curiosity.
A long sightline can connect spaces that are physically separated.
This is one reason the recent research is moving toward more complex models of spatial cognition rather than treating architecture as a collection of isolated objects.
The review proposed an Immersive Spatial Cognition Framework, connecting spatial stimuli with environmental exposure, physiological measurement, cognitive-emotional processing, evidence interpretation and, eventually, design translation.
That last part is particularly important.
Eventually.
We Can Measure Responses Better Than We Can Translate Them Into Design
This may be the most revealing finding of the entire paper.
The researchers created an Evidence-Based Neuroarchitecture Maturity Model to classify how far the research has progressed.
The four stages were:
Stage I — Conceptual Interpretation
Ideas and theoretical interpretations about how architecture may influence people.
Stage II — Experimental Validation
Researchers actually test environmental conditions and measure responses.
Stage III — Evidence Integration
Different sources of evidence are brought together to produce a stronger understanding.
Stage IV — Adaptive Design Operationalization
The evidence is actually incorporated into an adaptive or operational design process.
The distribution was:
- 30.6% Stage I
- 35.5% Stage II
- 33.1% Stage III
- 0.8% Stage IV.
That last number is fascinating.
Only one study out of the 121 was classified at the highest stage.
So when someone presents neuroarchitecture as though we already have a scientific formula that can tell an architect exactly how to design a room for a particular emotional or cognitive outcome, the current research does not justify that level of certainty.
At least not yet.
This Is Where I Think Architecture Needs More Humility
I like the idea of neuroarchitecture.
I also think it can be misused very easily.
Architecture has always tried to understand human experience. Architects have studied proportion, light, acoustics, materiality, symbolism, movement and the relationship between buildings and landscapes for centuries.
Neuroscience gives us additional tools.
It does not magically turn every architectural intuition into scientific fact.
For me, that distinction is important.
If research shows that a certain environmental characteristic is associated with a particular response under controlled conditions, that is interesting.
If several studies reproduce a similar result, it becomes more interesting.
If those findings can be translated into reliable design principles and demonstrated in real-world environments, that becomes much more powerful.
But there is a long distance between:
“People in this experiment responded differently to these environments.”
and
“Therefore, every building should be designed this way.”
The first is a research finding.
The second is a design conclusion.
They should not be confused.
The Rise of Virtual Reality Changes the Question
One of the reasons this field is developing so quickly is technology.
Researchers can now create controlled virtual environments and expose participants to different spatial conditions without constructing an entire building for every experiment.
That opens interesting possibilities.
Imagine keeping everything constant except one variable:
the ceiling height.
Or the amount of daylight.
Or the presence of vegetation.
Or the geometry of a corridor.
Or the amount of visual information.
Or the relationship between enclosed and open areas.
Instead of simply asking someone afterward, “Did you like the room?”, researchers can combine subjective responses with behavioral and physiological measurements.
That does not eliminate the limitations of experiments.
But it gives researchers more ways to investigate the same question.
The 2026 review specifically highlights the growing use of immersive environments, EEG, biometric systems and other measurement technologies in architectural research.
But Is a Laboratory Room the Same as Your Home?
This is where I think the next challenge begins.
A person does not experience their bedroom for five minutes while wearing sensors and knowing they are participating in a study.
They experience it after a difficult day.
They experience it while thinking about work.
They experience it with their own memories.
They experience it differently on a sunny morning and on a dark evening.
They change the furniture.
They leave objects on the table.
They open the curtains.
They close the door.
They live there.
And living somewhere is different from observing somewhere.
This is one of the reasons I am particularly interested in environmental psychology.
Architecture does not exist in isolation from the person using it.
The same room can mean different things to different people.
A large empty room may feel liberating to one person and uncomfortable to another.
A small room may feel restrictive to someone and deeply comforting to someone else.
A completely minimalist interior may feel peaceful to one person and strangely impersonal to another.
There is no architectural button labeled “make everyone calm.”
Human beings are much more complicated than that.
From Brain Measurements Back to the Drawing Board
For architects, perhaps the most useful question is not:
“What does neuroscience tell me to design?”
It is:
“What questions can neuroscience help me investigate?”
That is a different way of thinking.
Instead of beginning with a predetermined answer, we can become more curious about the relationship between design decisions and human experience.
For example:
Light
How does daylight distribution influence attention, comfort or perceived openness?
Spatial sequence
Does revealing an entire room immediately produce a different experience from gradually revealing it?
Materiality
How do texture, reflectance and material variation affect perception?
Geometry
When do curves, angles, enclosure or openness influence aesthetic or emotional responses?
Nature
How does actual contact with natural elements compare with visual representations of nature?
Acoustics
How does the sound environment modify the experience of an otherwise identical room?
These questions are more useful to me than simplistic rules.
They keep architecture open to evidence without reducing it to a laboratory experiment.
The Most Interesting Part May Be What We Still Don't Know
The new review does not present neuroarchitecture as a finished science.
Quite the opposite.
Its results show a field with substantial growth, increasingly sophisticated methods and a large amount of research—but also considerable methodological diversity and a very limited translation of evidence into operational adaptive design.
That is not a weakness to hide.
It is something worth saying openly.
Science becomes more useful when we know where its boundaries are.
And architecture becomes more interesting when we understand that human experience cannot be reduced to a single measurement.
Perhaps the future of neuroarchitecture will not be about creating buildings that manipulate the brain.
Perhaps it will be about creating better questions about the relationship between people and places.
That is a much more interesting ambition.
So, Can Architecture Really Change the Way We Think?
The honest answer is:
There is growing evidence that built environments can influence perception, cognition, emotion, behavior and physiological responses. But science has not yet produced a simple formula for turning those findings into universally valid architectural rules.
The recent review makes that distinction particularly clear.
We have more studies.
We have better instruments.
We have immersive technologies.
We have EEG, eye tracking, physiological measurements and behavioral experiments.
But we are still learning how to connect all of those measurements back to something an architect can actually draw, build and reliably evaluate.
And perhaps that is exactly where the next chapter of neuroarchitecture begins.
Not with the claim that we already understand the brain.
But with the willingness to measure, question, test, observe—and sometimes admit that the answer is still uncertain.
My Perspective as an Architect
For me, this is where neuroscience becomes genuinely useful to architecture.
Architecture has always involved intuition. Every architect develops a sense of proportion, rhythm, light, circulation and atmosphere through experience.
But intuition has limits.
Science can challenge our assumptions.
At the same time, architecture can challenge science by asking questions that are difficult to reproduce inside a laboratory.
A real building is messy. People are unpredictable. Context matters. Culture matters. Memory matters. The weather changes. The furniture moves. Life happens.
That complexity is not a problem to eliminate.
It is the reality architecture has to deal with.
And perhaps the real promise of neuroarchitecture is not to replace architectural experience with numbers.
It is to help us understand that experience a little better.
Final Thoughts
A building does more than occupy space.
It organizes what we see, where we move, what we notice and how we relate one part of the environment to another.
For decades, architects have understood many of these things intuitively.
Now neuroscience, psychology and new measurement technologies are giving researchers another way to investigate them.
The evidence is growing.
The methods are improving.
But the field is still young.
And I think that is exactly why we should pay attention to it.
Because the future of architecture may not depend on discovering one magical formula for designing the “perfect” room.
It may depend on something much simpler:
learning to design with a better understanding of the human being who will actually live inside the space.
Educational Disclaimer
This article is provided for educational and informational purposes only. It presents research findings, theoretical perspectives, and general information intended to encourage further reading and personal reflection. Individual experiences can vary, and the information presented should not be interpreted as a definitive explanation of any individual's experience.
References
Yılmaz, E., Akkam, M. S., & Sedes, F. (2026). Toward evidence-based neuroarchitecture: a systematic mapping and framework for immersive spatial cognition. Frontiers in Psychology, 17, 1919278. Published September 7, 2026. DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2026.1919278. Read the full study at Frontiers in Psychology
Page, M. J., et al. (2021). The PRISMA 2020 statement: an updated guideline for reporting systematic reviews. BMJ, 372, n71. DOI: 10.1136/bmj.n71. Read the PRISMA 2020 publication
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