Psychology experts at Essex University have discovered that modern buildings, with their repetitive straight lines windows and railings, differ so greatly from nature that they can induce migraines.

While our brains have evolved over tens of thousands of years to effectively process scenes from the natural world, the Essex researchers found that over the course of the last 100 years, the design of buildings has departed further every decade from the rule of nature.

Generally in nature, large stripes have a high contrast and smaller stripes a low contrast, so that they tend to cancel each other out.

But the artificial stripes found in modern buildings break this natural rule and their regular, repetitive spacing requires more effort for us to process, the academics have explained.

The Essex team say that architecture based on straight lines and uniformity forces our brains to work harder, and by monitoring the brains of people looking at modern urban scenes they found that the old grey matter requires more oxygen, which tends to cause headaches.

Models built by researchers including the universities of Lincoln and St Andrews showed vertical repeated patterns increase the activity of nerve cells in the brain.

The practical implications of the research could be that people who are vulnerable to migraines cannot function in certain modern offices, because the repetitive patterns bring on a headache every time they enter the building.

Co-author Arnold Wilkins, emeritus professor of psychology at Essex University, said: “Because the repetitive patterns of urban architecture break the rule of nature, it is more difficult for the human brain to process them efficiently.”

Writing on The Conversation, he added: “Because urban landscapes are not as easy to process, they are less comfortable to look at.

“Some patterns, such as the stripes on door mats, carpets and escalator stair treads can trigger headaches and even epileptic seizures.”

Dr Paul Hibbard, from the University of Essex, who also worked on the study, said: “In cities, there are now so many repetitive office buildings and office blocks where each has to look the same. It is the repetitive patterns of the windows balconies and stairwells which cause problems.”

Professor Hibbard added: ‘The brain reacts to the added energy needed to look at these images by causing pain, which ranges from a headache to a migraine.

“Good advice might be to go to a park and have a look at nature for a while to provide the patterns we find take less energy to process.”