Washington: How is climate change, or global warming affecting the human brain? An international team of researchers investigates how research has proven that a changing environment influences how our brains work, and how climate change may impact our brain function in the future in a report published in Nature Climate Change. The work is led by the University of Vienna.
Lead author Dr Kimberly C. Doell, of the University of Vienna, said: "We've long known that factors in our environment can lead to changes in the brain. Yet we're only just beginning to look at how climate change, the greatest global threat of our time, might change our brains. Given the increasingly frequent extreme weather events we're already experiencing, alongside factors such as air pollution, the way we access nature and the stress and anxiety people experience around climate change, it's crucial that we understand the impact this could all have on our brains. Only then can we start to find ways to mitigate these changes."
Now, the authors are calling for research to explore the impact on the human brain of being exposed to more extreme weather events, such as heatwaves, droughts, and hurricanes, and associated forest fires and floods. They believe such events may change brain structure, function, and overall health, and also call for more research to evaluate how this may explain changes in well-being and behaviour.
The paper also explores the role that neuroscience can play in influencing the way we think about climate change, our judgments and how we respond. Dr Mathew White, of the Universities of Exeter and Vienna, is a co-author on the study.
He said: "Understanding neural activity that is relevant to motivations, emotions and temporal horizons may help predict behaviour, and improve our understanding of, underlying barriers preventing people from behaving as pro-environmentally as they might wish. Both brain function and climate change are highly complex areas. We need to start seeing them as interlinked, and to take action to protect our brains against the future realities of climate change, and start using our brains better to cope with what is already happening and prevent the worse-case scenarios." (with ANI inputs)
