This article highlights the shocking effects of climate change on the brain.
Yoko Nomura’s Stress in Pregnancy study revealed the effects on the children of the prenatal women that lived through the devastating Superstorm Sandy in New York City in 2012:
- Children in utero have an alarmingly high risk of psychiatric conditions today
- Girls exposed to the sandstorm prenatally experienced a 20 fold increase in anxiety and 30 fold increase in depression later in life compared to those that were not exposed
- Boys had a 60 fold increased risk of ADHD and 20 fold increased risk of conduct disorder
Cognitive neuroscientists have explored how extreme temperatures and rapidly increasing CO2 levels impair decision making and problem solving abilities and reduce our ability to learn.
This January, Chinese economists found that students that took maths exams on days above 32C performed as if they had lost a quarter of a year of education compared to when they took the tests between 22-24C.
Feelings of aggression are more common during hotter days, and not just for humans.
- Black widow spiders are more likely to eat their siblings in the heat
- Rhesus monkeys are more inclined to fight with one another
And:
- Baseball pitchers are more likely to intentionally hit batters with their pitches
- US Postal Service workers experience a 5% increase in incidents of harrassment and discrimination on days above 32C compared to cooler days
In 2017, Finnish researchers found that high temperatures diminish serotonin function, as seen with people who committed violent crimes. In this people, the levels of serotonin transporter proteins in their blood, which highly correlates with outside temperatures could account for the 40% increase in violent crime in Finland.
Prolonged exposure to high temperatures activates several biochemical pathways related to Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s.
“The number of people living with Alzheimer’s is expected to triple by 2050, says Ikiz – and that’s without taking the climate crisis into account. “That scares me,” she says. “Because in 2050, we’ll be like: ‘Ah, this is awful. Let’s try to do something.’ But it will be too late for a lot of people.”
And these are just a few of the statistics mentioned in the article. What is so powerful is that researchers across the globe are coming to the same conclusion that climate change is having a devastating impact on our brains and we must do something now.
Strongly recommend you read the whole article and follow up on some of the research that has been cited.
