Air Pollution Clouds the Mind and Makes Everyday Tasks Challenging

Researchers exposed study participants to either high levels of air pollution — using candle smoke — or clean air, testing cognitive abilities before and four hours after exposure. The tests measured working memory, selective attention, emotion recognition, psychomotor speed, and sustained attention.

Publishing their findings today (6 Feb) in Nature Communications, researchers from the Universities of Birmingham and Manchester reveal that selective attention and emotion recognition were negatively affected by air pollution — regardless of whether subjects breathed normally or only through their mouths.

The experts suggest that inflammation caused by pollution may be responsible for these deficits noting that while selective attention and emotion recognition were affected, working memory was not. This indicates that some brain functions are more resilient to short-term pollution exposure.