Environment International (Apr 2023)

The impact of pre-adulthood urbanicity on hippocampal subfield volumes and neurocognitive abilities in young adults

  • Mengge Liu,
  • Tong Han,
  • Yue Wu,
  • Jingliang Cheng,
  • Longjiang Zhang,
  • Bing Zhang,
  • Xi-Nian Zuo,
  • Wenzhen Zhu,
  • Shijun Qiu,
  • Zuojun Geng,
  • Xiaochu Zhang,
  • Guangbin Cui,
  • Quan Zhang,
  • Yongqiang Yu,
  • Hui Zhang,
  • Bo Gao,
  • Xiaojun Xu,
  • Zhenwei Yao,
  • Wen Qin,
  • Meng Liang,
  • Feng Liu,
  • Lining Guo,
  • Qiang Xu,
  • Jilian Fu,
  • Jiayuan Xu,
  • Jie Tang,
  • Nana Liu,
  • Kaizhong Xue,
  • Peng Zhang,
  • Wei Li,
  • Dapeng Shi,
  • Caihong Wang,
  • Jia-Hong Gao,
  • Su Lui,
  • Zhihan Yan,
  • Feng Chen,
  • Jiance Li,
  • Jing Zhang,
  • Wen Shen,
  • Yanwei Miao,
  • Junfang Xian,
  • Le Yu,
  • Kai Xu,
  • Meiyun Wang,
  • Zhaoxiang Ye,
  • Wei-Hua Liao,
  • Dawei Wang,
  • Chunshui Yu

Journal volume & issue
Vol. 174
p. 107905

Abstract

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Background: Urbanicity refers to the conditions that are particular to urban areas and is a growing environmental challenge that may affect hippocampus and neurocognition. This study aimed to investigate the effects of the average pre-adulthood urbanicity on hippocampal subfield volumes and neurocognitive abilities as well as the sensitive age windows of the urbanicity effects. Participants and methods: We included 5,390 CHIMGEN participants (3,538 females; age: 23.69 ± 2.26 years, range: 18–30 years). Pre-adulthood urbanicity of each participant was defined as the average value of annual night-time light (NL) or built-up% from age 0–18, which were extracted from remote-sensing satellite data based on annual residential coordinates of the participants. The hippocampal subfield volumes were calculated based on structural MRI and eight neurocognitive measures were assessed. The linear regression was applied to investigate the associations of pre-adulthood NL with hippocampal subfield volumes and neurocognitive abilities, mediation models were used to find the underlying pathways among urbanicity, hippocampus and neurocognition, and distributed lag models were used to identify sensitive age windows of urbanicity effect. Results: Higher pre-adulthood NL was associated with greater volumes in the left (β = 0.100, 95%CI: [0.075, 0.125]) and right (0.078, [0.052, 0.103]) fimbria and left subiculum body (0.045, [0.020, 0.070]) and better neurocognitive abilities in information processing speed (-0.212, [-0.240, −0.183]), working memory (0.085, [0.057, 0.114]), episodic memory (0.107, [0.080, 0.135]), and immediate (0.094, [0.065, 0.123]) and delayed (0.087, [0.058, 0.116]) visuospatial recall, and hippocampal subfield volumes and visuospatial memory showed bilateral mediations for the urbanicity effects. Urbanicity effects were greatest on the fimbria in preschool and adolescence, on visuospatial memory and information processing from childhood to adolescence and on working memory after 14 years. Conclusion: These findings improve our understanding of the impact of urbanicity on hippocampus and neurocognitive abilities and will benefit for designing more targeted intervention for neurocognitive improvement.

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