It is well known that air pollution constitutes a major public health problem, in particular by increasing the risk of respiratory or cardiac problems, but there is little data on the consequences of this in the brainbrain. To fill this gap, scientists at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver conducted a small clinical testclinical test with 25 healthy participants. Some of them breathed the gazgaz exhaust from a diesel vehicle for two hours while scientists tracked brain activity using a Functional MRIFunctional MRI. The results were compared to a control group that breathedairair filtered.
The scientists focused their research on the default mode network, the set of brain regions that are active when the brain is at rest. In the participants who breathed in the exhaust gases, this cerebral activity was significantly lower than in the people who breathed in the filtered air, and this after only two hours of exposure. This alteration in brain activity could have adverse health consequences.