Atmospheric environment and human brain architecture: associations across multimodal imaging

Climate change represents one of the most pressing challenges to global public health. Temperature variations, altered precipitation patterns and changes of seasonal and periodic weather events have been linked to a range of adverse health outcomes, including cardiovascular disease, respiratory illness, and mental health disorders. Nevertheless, neurobiological consequences of environmental atmospheric conditions remain poorly characterised in terms of the brain architecture.

We analysed structural neuroimaging data from 30,831 participants in the UK Biobank (4,294 with longitudinal follow-up) and demonstrated that meteorological conditions are associated with measurable variables in brain structure. Specifically, warmer temperatures, greater solar exposure and reduced precipitation and wind speed correlate with differences in both grey matter morphometry and white matter microstructure. Notably, these weather associations exceed in magnitude the contributions of conventional risk factors such as Alzheimer’s disease polygenic risk scores and self-reported mental health status.

These findings expose atmospheric parameters as quantifiable environmental correlates of human cerebral architecture. Thus, the brain tissue may be more sensitive to routine meteorological variation than previously recognised. Due to climate pattern shifts globally, an understanding of these climate-brain interactions becomes increasingly relevant for the biomedical sciences and public health.