In the more recent years of my stay topside terra firma, I’ve come to view my rural upbringing as one of the greatest assets I possess. Now, I learn that maybe it’s helping keep that pesky lizard brain at bay, too.

The Economist reports on a study that compared primitive brain parts between city and rural dwellers:

People living in the countryside had the lowest levels of activity in their amygdalas. Those living in towns had higher levels. City dwellers had the highest. . . In the case of the pACC, however, what mattered was not where someone was living now, but where he or she was brought up. The more urban a person’s childhood, the more active his pACC, regardless of where he was dwelling at the time of the experiment.