Xu and colleagues give Ray Oldenburg’s “third place” a neurophysiological test by comparing socially active urban settings with natural environments among forty young adults in Shanghai. Their most striking result is conceptual rather than merely biometric: third places and natural spaces can both produce restorative effects, yet apparently through different affective pathways. Using fNIRS, Empatica E4 wristbands, questionnaires and interviews, the study links third places to pleasure generated through social engagement and environmental design, whereas natural settings are associated more strongly with gratitude and biophilic connection. The methodological operation is genuinely multimodal, coordinating cerebral, physiological, subjective and qualitative signals instead of allowing one instrument to stand in for experience. This makes the paper important for neurourbanism because it challenges the habitual equation of urban mental-health benefit with greenness alone. The wider bridge is to social-infrastructure research: cafés, plazas, shared interiors and informal gathering spaces become health-supporting urban devices whose efficacy emerges from the conjunction of spatial affordance, sociability and affective activation.