Dr. William Hodos NACS Seminar: Dr. Megan Herting

Air pollution and brain development: Emerging findings from the nationwide ABCD Study

Environmental pollutants that we encounter every day can have a significant impact on our health, including our brains. Within this realm, outdoor air pollution is emerging as an especially prominent neurotoxicant. Ongoing brain development may render children and adolescents especially vulnerable. While mechanisms remain unclear, promising advances in human neuroimaging can help elucidate both sensitive periods and neurobiological consequences of air pollution exposure. In this talk, I will first discuss how air pollution can reach the brain and the neurobiological processes it is known to impact. In the second portion of the talk, I will highlight emerging neuroimaging research showing even relatively ‘safe’ levels of air pollution exposure map onto differences in various brain development phenotypes in childhood and adolescence. This will include emerging findings from my research team linking air quality and brain structure and function in the large nationwide U.S. cohort known as the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development Study. Together, these findings highlight how the application of neuroimaging to pressing questions within the field of environmental neuroscience holds great promise to inform policy makers to improve public health.

Dr. Megan Herting is an Associate Professor at the University of Southern California.

Dr. William Hodos NACS Seminars are free and open to the public.