Skip to main content
Go to the home page of the European Commission (opens in new window)
English English
CORDIS - EU research results
CORDIS
Content archived on 2024-06-18

BRain dEvelopment and Air polluTion ultrafine particles in scHool childrEn

Objective

Traffic-related air pollution is an important environmental problem that may affect neurodevelopment. Ultrafine particles (UFP) translocate to the brains of experimental animals resulting in local proinflammatory overexpression. As the basic elements for thinking are acquired by developing brains during infancy and childhood, susceptibility may be elevated in early life.

We postulate that traffic-related air pollution (particularly UFPs and metals/hydrocarbons content) impairs neurodevelopment in part via effects on frontal lobe maturation, likely increasing attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). BREATHE objectives are to develop valid methods to measure children's personal UFP exposure and to develop valid neuroimaging methods to assess correlations between neurobehavior, neurostructural alterations and particle deposition in order to reveal how traffic pollution affects children¿s exposure to key contaminants and brain development, and identify susceptible subgroups.

We have conducted general population birth cohort studies providing preliminary evidence of residential air pollution effects on prenatal growth and mental development.

We aim to demonstrate short and long-term effects on neurodevelopment using innovative epidemiological methods interfaced with environmental chemistry and neuroimaging following 4000 children from 40 schools with contrasting high/low traffic exposure in six linked components involving: repeated psychometric tests, UFP exposure assessment using personal, school and home measurements, gene-environment interactions on inflammation, detoxification pathways and ADHD genome-wide-associated genes, neuroimaging (magnetic resonance imaging/spectroscopy) in ADHD/non-ADHD children, integrative causal modeling using mathematics, and replication in 2900 children with neurodevelopment followed from pregnancy.

We believe the expected results will have worldwide global planning and policy implications.

Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)

CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: https://op.europa.eu/en/web/eu-vocabularies/euroscivoc.

You need to log in or register to use this function

Topic(s)

Calls for proposals are divided into topics. A topic defines a specific subject or area for which applicants can submit proposals. The description of a topic comprises its specific scope and the expected impact of the funded project.

Call for proposal

Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.

ERC-2010-AdG_20100317
See other projects for this call

Funding Scheme

Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.

ERC-AG - ERC Advanced Grant

Host institution

FUNDACION PRIVADA INSTITUTO DE SALUD GLOBAL BARCELONA
EU contribution
No data
Address
C ROSSELLO 132 PLANTA 05
08036 Barcelona
Spain

See on map

Region
Este Cataluña Barcelona
Activity type
Research Organisations
Links
Total cost

The total costs incurred by this organisation to participate in the project, including direct and indirect costs. This amount is a subset of the overall project budget.

No data

Beneficiaries (4)

My booklet 0 0