Research shows that climate disasters hit the brain even before babies are born
When Superstorm Sandy stepped out a New York City for New York City in October 2012, it flooded a huge fragment of downtown Manhattan, leaving 2 million people without electricity, heating, and damaging tens of thousands of homes. Spent the sultry summer in New York City, and the storm had another 100-degree heat wave parade.
For those who were pregnant at the time, it was not only uncomfortable to endure these extremes, but it might have left a lasting mark on the child’s brain. This is based on a new study published Wednesday in the peer-reviewed journal PLO One. Using an MRI scan, researchers at Queen’s College in New York City found that children of mothers who live through Superstorm Sandy have obvious brain differences that may hinder their emotional development. The researchers found that when people are exposed to extreme heat during pregnancy, the effects are even more dramatic in addition to tropical storms.
“It’s not only a climate stressor or an isolated event, but a combination of everything,” said Donato Deingeniis, the lead author of the study, a PhD in Neuropsy at the CUNY Graduate Center. Deingeniis’s study is the first to study the combined role of natural disasters and extreme heat, which usually coincides. A few years ago, scientists called summer a “dangerous season” because it was a period of collision risk, including heat, hurricanes, wildfires and toxic smoke. The temperature continues to rise to new heights in summer.
The study analyzed brain imaging data from 34 children, about 8 years old, and the mother became pregnant during Superstorm Sandy — some of whom became pregnant when Sandy landed, and some of them were exposed to calories of 95 degrees or higher during pregnancy. While the researchers did not find that the individual calories had a big impact, Sandy’s life through the superstorm caused an increase in the volume of the basal ganglia, part of the brain that involved regulating emotions.
While larger scales may be compensation for coping with stress, changes in basal ganglia are associated with behavioral challenges in children such as depression and autism, Deingeniis said.
“What we’re seeing is compelling evidence that climate crisis is not only an environmental emergency, but may be a neurological crisis, for the neurological crisis that will bring about descendants of our planet,” said Duke Shereen, co-author of the study and director of the MRI facility at the CUNY graduate center. Global warming has devastated Superstorm Sandy even more due to rising sea levels and rising ocean temperatures, which could increase rainfall.
The time before birth is “very very, very sensitive” to development because the fetus’s body is undergoing dramatic changes. According to the study, the brain grows the fastest in the uterus, reaching more than one-third of its total adult population before birth. Nomura said any additional pressure at the time, even if it was small, “may have a greater impact.”
But that super sensitive period also brought a window of opportunity. “Developing science, including the science in this article, is exciting because it not only tells us What We can protect children from climate change, but we also tell us when We can step in protecting children to the greatest extent possible. Lindsey Burghardt, chief science officer of the Harvard Development Center Children’s Center, said in an email.
According to Deingeniis, although there is much evidence that prenatal stress often affects brain development in children, studies on climate-related stress are lacking. “It’s still an explosive growth area,” said Jennifer Barkin, a professor at the Messel University School of Medicine in Georgia, who is studying the impact of Hurricane Helen on maternal health last year.
Barkin said Deingeniis’s research provides concrete evidence on how climate charging events affect the brain. “Sometimes it’s hard for people to be mentally healthy because it’s not that you can take X-rays and see the broken bones,” she said, but it’s easier to understand the imaging shows a difference in brain volume due to exposure to environmental stress.
Barkin, who developed an index to measure the health of mothers after childbirth, said people are starting to focus more on mothers and their mental health, rather than in the long run, but in providing healthy babies. “We tend to focus things on the outcome of the child, which is important, but to keep the child healthy, mothers must also be healthy,” she said. “Because when moms struggle, the family struggles.”
This article originally appeared in Grist’s Grist, a non-profit independent media organization dedicated to telling stories about the future of climate solutions and justice. Learn more at grist.org.
