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Coordinating institution of EU-project environMENTAL

Coordinating Institution of Streetmind Platform

environMENTAL Project: www.environmental-project.org

Frauke Nees is Director of the Institute of Medical Psychology and Professor of Medical Psychology at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität (LMU) in Munich (since 2025) and was before (2020-2025) Director of the Institute of Medical Psychology and Medical Sociology, University Medical Center Schleswig-Holstein and Professor for Medical Psychology and Behavioral Neurobiology, Kiel University. She did her PhD (Dr. rer. nat.) at the University of Trier (fellowships from the Nikolaus-Koch-foundation and a German Research Foundation funded International Research Training Group program, 2005-2008), was then Research Group Head, Deputy Professor and Permanent Deputy of the Scientific Director of the Institute of Cognitive and Clinical Neuroscience at the Central Institute of Mental Health Mannheim, Medical Faculty Mannheim, Heidelberg University (2008-2020, 2018-2020 with a Heisenberg fellowship, funded by the German Research Foundation), and PostDoc and clinical scientist at the Medical University Vienna (2015-2016) and the Clinic of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and Psychotherapy at the Central Institute of Mental Health Mannheim (2016-2017). 

Purpose of review 

Environmental factors such as climate, urbanicity, and exposure to nature are becoming increasingly important influencers of mental health. Incorporating data gathered from real-life contexts holds promise to substantially enhance laboratory experiments by providing a more comprehensive understanding of everyday behaviors in natural environments. We provide an up-to-date review of current technological and methodological developments in mental health assessments, neuroimaging and environmental sensing.

Recent findings 

Mental health research progressed in recent years towards integrating tools, such as smartphone based mental health assessments or mobile neuroimaging, allowing just-in-time daily assessments. Moreover, they are increasingly enriched by dynamic measurements of the environment, which are already being integrated with mental health assessments. To ensure ecological validity and accuracy it is crucial to capture environmental data with a high spatio-temporal granularity. Simultaneously, as a supplement to experimentally controlled conditions, there is a need for a better understanding of cognition in daily life, particularly regarding our brain's responses in natural settings.

Summary 

The presented overview on the developments and feasibility of “real-life” approaches for mental health and brain research and their potential to identify relationships along the mental health-environment-brain axis informs strategies for real-life individual and dynamic assessments.

Read more here in Current Opinion in Psychiatry.