Open Offices Cramp Productivity, Study Says

Nothing has been more in vogue in the modern workplace than the open office, as illustrated by Bloomberg in its New York headquarters, among other corporate giants. But a new study put out by British neuroscientist Dr. Jack Lewis and featured on the U.K. Channel 4 Program, "The Secret Life of Buildings" says that open offices are bad for the brain by making it smaller.

The study also found that when workers are forced to work in sterile environments that banned them from personalizing their office, their productivity was reduced by 15 percent. The tests, as the Daily Telegraph reports, were conducted by placing a cap on workers to measure brain waves to track for bursts of distraction.