Research Areas

Prenatal and early childhood exposure to environmental toxicants contributes to the growing rate of neurodevelopmental disorders. However, the mechanisms by which environmental chemicals alter brain development are largely unknown. Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) serves as a novel research tool by which to study the effects of environmental exposures on brain health. Using volumetric and functional MRI, diffusor tensor imaging, and magnetic resonance spectroscopy we are able to visualize in vivo brain structure and function. This neural data can then be harnessed to provide possible causal links between environmental exposure and behavioral and cognitive manifestations. Combing MRI techniques with exposure data and prospective cohort designs, our research has begun to elucidate how the environment shapes structural and functional patterns in the developing brain. This knowledge is further combined with functional behavioral and cognitive tasks that allow us to investigate how prenatal exposure to environmental toxicants may alter the typical neurodevelopmental trajectory of brain and behavioral outcomes.

Teeth form rings as they grow - just like trees, but everyday rather than every year. Notably, they form a distinct ring on the day of a child’s birth which is termed, “the neonatal line”. Highly specific laboratory devices then use these rings to measure the time at which the body was exposed to certain chemicals, toxins, or other substances. Prior use of dentine biomarkers in research has shown that their high degree of specificity is unrivaled compared to other techniques when trying to determine both exposure type and severity. Thus, dentine biomarkers enable us to pinpoint the time of an otherwise unknown chemical exposure and predict the severity of physiological harm that may be attributed to that exposure.

Our dentine biomarker analysis takes place at the The Senator Frank R. Lautenberg Environmental Health Sciences Laboratory here at Mount Sinai.

The impact of exposure can be delayed by years (i.e., latencies), so timing of exposure matters as much as the dose. Though often costly and lengthy, prospective birth cohort studies are the ideal design to study the impact of chemicals on child development and health. It is increasingly understood that exposure to some environmental factors jeopardizes children’s health and might relate to the surges in environmentally related diseases, such as asthma, obesity, and neurodevelopmental disorders such autism spectrum disorder and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder. Our research has identified disproportionate environmental health risks for children through longitudinal birth cohort studies of environmental exposures and children’s health. In our current and future studies, we propose moving beyond associations of environmental exposures and cognition and expanding to other neurologic phenomena including motor and emotional outcomes.