CEN Colloquium: Nicholas Judd, Wildfire pollution exposure during childhood adversely affects cognitive and neural development

Air pollution has well-documented negative cardiovascular and respiratory consequences. However, the impact of particulate matter pollution (PM2.5) on brain development is unclear. Animal studies suggest that exposure to early-life PM2.5 can cause adverse neurodevelopmental outcomes, but in vivo human work has been hampered by cross-sectional designs and heavily confounded PM2.5 exposure measures. Here we use an innovative natural experimental design to isolate the effects of wildfire pollution on neurocognitive development in a large cohort of children (N>9000, 4 waves, age 9-16). Doing so, we find that greater wildfire PM2.5 exposure is robustly associated with slower brain development and shallower cognitive improvement across early adolescence. Our study underscores the urgent public health concern that wildfire PM2.5 poses for childhood development.

Speaker bio:

Nicholas Judd is a cognitive neuroscientist examining how environmental factors influence brain and cognitive development in children. He is a tenure-track researcher at Stockholm University’s Department of Psychology, having been awarded a 5-year Pro Futura Scientia Fellowship by the Swedish Collegium for Advanced Study. He is also a recipient of the Jacobs Foundation Fellowship (2025–2027) for his work in childhood development and the eScience Fellowship (2024–2025) for his work in open science. His interdisciplinary research merges psychology, economics, sociology, and neuroscience to identify the causal impacts of different environmental exposures on neural and cognitive outcomes.

Join in person at the MPIB or remotely via WebEx: https://mpib-berlin.webex.com/mpib-berlin/j.php?MTID=maff3dee0ad54cb921191ff33d0b92347

Meeting number: 2744 645 6180

Password: ArpQMePJ352