Scientists have confirmed what every urbanite has long suspected – life in the city is more stressful.

Researchers have shown that the parts of the brain dealing with stress and emotion are affected by living among the crowds.

The findings help shed light on why those who are born and raised in urban areas are more likely to suffer from anxiety, depression and schizophrenia than those brought up in the countryside.

The team of international scientists behind the finding are unsure why city life is so bad for the nerves.

However, past studies have shown that exposure to green space reduces stress, boosts health and makes us less vulnerable to depression. The findings come from the brain scans of 32 healthy volunteers from urban and rural areas.

Dr Jens Pruessner of the Douglas Mental Health University Institute in Quebec, who helped carry out the study, said: ‘Previous findings have shown that the risk for anxiety disorders is 21 per cent higher for people from the city, who also have a 39 per cent increase for mood disorders.

‘In addition, the incidence of schizophrenia is almost doubled for individuals born and brought up in cities. These values are a cause for concern.’

Dr Pruessner and colleagues from the Univerity of Heidleberg in Germany monitored the brain activity of adult volunteers while they carried out mental arithmetic puzzles under time pressure.

The functional magnetic resonance imaging scans revealed that the brains of those living in cities reacted differently to stress, the researchers report in the journal Nature.

(Read by Lee Hannon. Lee Hannon is a journalist at the China Daily Website.)