ABSTRACT
This chapter reviews research on the emotional attachment to older or historic places through both a phenomenological perspective and neuroscience to help understand the emotional experience of being in historic places. In historic environments, the presence of decay or patina has a strong influence on the degree and type of emotional attachment that people experience. Visual preference studies indicate that people who are strongly drawn to live or work within historic environments are more likely to prefer environmental decay and to perceive this decay as less old and in better condition that the general population. To date, neuroscience has been unable to directly answer questions related to the complex concept of emotional attachments to place, instead remaining focused on understanding elemental neurological functions. There is no overarching theory for how all of the parts of the brain work together to produce something as complex as place attachment, much less attachment to historic places. Evidence related to attachment to historic places is reviewed, including an unpublished study by the National Trust (UK) in which the perception of historic places seems to involve the amygdala, the medial prefrontal cortex, and the parahippocampal place area.
