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The effect of the “exposome” on developmental brain health and cognitive outcomes

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Abstract

Each child’s unique environment and experiences play a crucial role in shaping neurodevelopment and cognitive outcomes. Though a long history of prior research has highlighted the importance of numerous aspects of early life environments, including physical/chemical, psychosocial, socioeconomic, and cultural factors, it remains challenging to fully capture an individual’s complete set of varied exposures, experiences, and external environments (“exposome”) in a single study. The growing field of “exposomics” aims to overcome these challenges by leveraging interdisciplinary ideas and diverse methodologies to assess the additive and interactive effects of multimodal environmental features in relation to health outcomes. Here, we expand upon prior theories to describe a conceptual framework for leveraging exposomics in studies of brain health and cognitive functioning, including the outsized role of environmental influences during sensitive windows of neurodevelopmental plasticity in childhood and adolescence. We also describe current methodologies for the measurement and analysis of the exposome and suggest new ways to apply these methods in future work. Efforts to quantify the exposome in large-scale samples of youth have already begun to yield important new insights regarding environmental impacts on cognitive neurodevelopment and hold great promise for future work aiming to support healthy development in youth.

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Fig. 1: Schematic depiction of an individual’s “exposome”.

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Acknowledgements

Funding for this work was provided by a NARSAD Young Investigator Award from the Brain and Behavior Research Foundation (ASK) and the National Institute of Mental Health (1L30MH131061-01; ASK).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychological Sciences, University of Connecticut, Storrs, CT, USA

    Heather Robinson, Niyati Dave, Anna Wagner, Natalie Kells & Arielle S. Keller

  2. Department of Psychiatry, Perelman School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, USA

    Ran Barzilay

  3. Lifespan Brain Institute of the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and Penn Medicine, Philadelphia, PA, USA

    Ran Barzilay

  4. Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and Behavioral Science, Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, Philadelphia, PA, USA

    Ran Barzilay

  5. Institute for the Brain and Cognitive Sciences, University of Connecticut, Storrs, CT, USA

    Arielle S. Keller

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Contributions

HR and ASK formulated the topic and the main idea. HR, ND and NK conducted the review of literature material. HR wrote the initial draft. AW designed all schematics. HR, ND, RB, AW, NK and ASK revised the manuscript. All authors contributed to the final draft.

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Correspondence to Arielle S. Keller.

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RB reports owning stock in Taliaz Health and serving on the scientific boards of Taliaz Health outside the submitted work. All other authors declare no competing interests.

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Robinson, H., Dave, N., Barzilay, R. et al. The effect of the “exposome” on developmental brain health and cognitive outcomes. Neuropsychopharmacol. (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41386-025-02180-6

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