Organophosphates are among the most commonly used classes of pesticides in the United States, despite mounting evidence linking prenatal exposure to the chemicals to poorer cognition and behavior problems in children.
A new study by researchers is one of the first to use advanced brain imaging to reveal how exposure to these chemicals in the womb changes brain activity.
The study, which appeared this week in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, used functional near-infrared imaging (fNIRS) to monitor blood flow in the brains of 95 teenagers born and raised in California's Salinas Valley, where agricultural spraying of pesticides is common.
Compared to their peers, teenagers estimated to have higher levels of prenatal exposure to organophosphates showed altered brain activity while performing tasks that require executive control, the study found.
"These results are compelling, because they support what we have seen with our neuropsychological testing, which is that organophosphates impact the brain," said the lead author on the study.
The teenagers were part of the Center for the Health Assessment of Mothers and Children of Salinas (CHAMACOS), a longitudinal study examining the effects of pesticides and other environmental toxins on childhood development. The sudy was initiated by UC Berkeley investigators more than 20 years ago. Previous CHAMACOS work has linked prenatal organophosphate exposure with attention problems and lower IQ in children.
In the current study, the researchers used fNIRS to measure brain activation while teens ages 15 to 17 engaged in a variety of tasks requiring executive function, attention, social cognition and language comprehension.
The fNIRS technique uses infrared light to monitor blood flow in the outer regions, or cortex, of the brain. It provides similar information as functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), but only requires a small cap of infrared light sources, rather than massive MRI tube, making it a more affordable and portable choice for research studies.
The researchers also used data from the California Pesticide Use Reporting program, which documents when and where agricultural pesticides are sprayed, to estimate their residential proximity to organophosphate application during pregnancy.
They found that teens with higher prenatal organophosphate exposure had less blood flow to the frontal cortex when engaged in tasks that test cognitive flexibility and visual working memory, and that they had more blood flow to the parietal and temporal lobes during tests of linguistic working memory.
"With fNIRS and other neuroimaging, we are seeing more directly the potential impact of organophosphate exposure on the brain, and it may be more sensitive to neurological deficit than cognitive testing," said the senior author of the study.
Little is known about the relationship between pesticide exposure and the brain, so it's not clear why organophosphate exposure is associated with lower brain activity for some tasks and higher brain activity for others.
However, similar patterns have been observed in other conditions affecting the brain, including Type 1 diabetes, Parkinson's and Alzheimer's, said the co-author of the paper.
"The brain has a remarkable ability to utilize compensatory mechanisms to counteract long-term insults," the co-author said. "Higher activation may represent the recruitment and utilization of extra neural resources to address functional inefficiency related to a long-term insult, and lower activation, then, could be related to the eventual failure to recruit these resources after continued exposure or disease exhausts the brain's ability to bring compensatory responses online."
In the future, the team plans to repeat the brain imaging experiments on the more than 500 other participants in the CHAMACOS study to test if the associations hold.
https://news.berkeley.edu/2019/08/27/prenatal-pesticide-exposure-linked-to-changes-in-teens-brain-activity/
https://www.pnas.org/content/early/2019/08/20/1903940116
Prenatal pesticide exposure linked to changes in teen's brain activity
- 1,851 views
- Added
Edited
Latest News
Tumor infiltration of immun…
By newseditor
Posted 28 May
New light-controlled 'off s…
By newseditor
Posted 28 May
Gene function during embryo…
By newseditor
Posted 28 May
Formation of 3D blood vesse…
By newseditor
Posted 27 May
Liver regeneration during c…
By newseditor
Posted 27 May
Other Top Stories
Engineering synthetic DNA to study gene regulation
Read more
New stem cell mechanism in your gut
Read more
A stem cell regulator enables lifelong sperm production
Read more
Turning stem cells into sensory interneurons
Read more
Molecular landscapes of human hippocampal immature neurons across l…
Read more
Protocols
SEMORE: SEgmentation and MO…
By newseditor
Posted 26 May
Spatially resolved lipidomi…
By newseditor
Posted 24 May
Efficient expansion and CRI…
By newseditor
Posted 21 May
Massively parallel in vivo…
By newseditor
Posted 20 May
Breast cancer-on-chip for p…
By newseditor
Posted 16 May
Publications
Circadian tumor infiltratio…
By newseditor
Posted 28 May
Kalium channelrhodopsins ef…
By newseditor
Posted 28 May
Double-duty isomerases: a c…
By newseditor
Posted 28 May
Signal switching may enhanc…
By newseditor
Posted 28 May
Emerging paradigms and rece…
By newseditor
Posted 28 May
Presentations
Hydrogels in Drug Delivery
By newseditor
Posted 12 Apr
Lipids
By newseditor
Posted 31 Dec
Cell biology of carbohydrat…
By newseditor
Posted 29 Nov
RNA interference (RNAi)
By newseditor
Posted 23 Oct
RNA structure and functions
By newseditor
Posted 19 Oct
Posters
A chemical biology/modular…
By newseditor
Posted 22 Aug
Single-molecule covalent ma…
By newseditor
Posted 04 Jul
ASCO-2020-HEALTH SERVICES R…
By newseditor
Posted 23 Mar
ASCO-2020-HEAD AND NECK CANCER
By newseditor
Posted 23 Mar
ASCO-2020-GENITOURINARY CAN…
By newseditor
Posted 23 Mar