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The exposome and the developing adolescent brain: understanding mechanisms of neuroplasticity

Neuropsychopharmacology volume 51, pages 328–329 (2026)Cite this article

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The exposome itself may also be inherently constrained by developmental stage [5]. For humans, infancy presents limited opportunities for input beyond the immediate caregiving environment and, consequently, may represent heightened risk for the permanent loss of specific functions (e.g., language) due to neglect/deprivation. As children mature, they are commonly exposed to, and often seek out, other sources of environmental input—peers, neighbors, online communities—that can supply cognitive, emotional, and material enrichment (or harm). Thus, the expansion of the exposome during adolescence means that factors influencing experience-dependent mechanisms of neuroplasticity will have an outsized effect—for better or worse.

Looking ahead, it will be critical to adopt interdisciplinary approaches to test how internal, external, and contextual factors of the exposome influence mechanisms and regulators of neuroplasticity. For example, advanced magnetic resonance (MR) spectroscopy methods in humans have shown that prefrontal cortex development is supported by shifts in excitatory/inhibitory balance [6] in similar ways as observed in rodent studies on ocular dominance [4]. Multimodal MR methods in longitudinal cohort studies provide the means to probe excitatory/inhibitory balance and myelin content across development and can also be combined with post-mortem tissue analyses and multiomic data (e.g., epi/genomics, proteomics, metabolomics) to generate synergetic insights. Other opportunities to test causal mechanism include drugs that alter the expression of brain-derived neurotropic factors or training paradigms that boost learning [5]. In sum, the field is poised to embrace exposome neuroscience for enhancing adolescent brain health and wellbeing.

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Fig. 1: The exposome and its effects on mechanisms of neuroplasticity change across development.

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Acknowledgements

TCH is funded in part by the National Institute of Mental Health (R01MH12176, R21MH130817), which played no role in in the preparation, review, or approval of this manuscript. Figure 1 was created in https://BioRender.com.

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  1. Department of Psychology, Department of Psychiatry & Biobehavioral Sciences, Brain Research Institute, Interdepartmental Graduate Program in Neuroscience, University of California, Los Angeles, CA, USA

    Tiffany C. Ho

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Correspondence to Tiffany C. Ho.

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Ho, T.C. The exposome and the developing adolescent brain: understanding mechanisms of neuroplasticity. Neuropsychopharmacol. 51, 328–329 (2026). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41386-025-02243-8

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