Neuroscience research links physical clutter to cognitive fatigue

Research indicates that physical clutter in a person's visual field can directly impair cognitive performance and concentration. Rather than being a matter of simple laziness, a disorganized environment creates a competition for the brain's limited processing resources.

A study led by Sabine Kastner at the Princeton Neuroscience Institute, published in The Journal of Neuroscience, utilized functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to examine how cluttered environments affect the human brain. The findings suggest that multiple simultaneous visual stimuli cause a neural contest within the visual cortex, as different objects compete to be represented at a brain level.

This constant influx of peripheral, “bottom-up” stimuli forces the visual cortex to work continuously to filter out irrelevant signals. This filtering process consumes energy that would otherwise be allocated to working memory, thereby reducing attention and increasing cognitive fatigue. Conversely, reorganizing and cleaning a space has been shown to significantly increase neural activity dedicated to primary tasks.