The Earth Brain Health Commission

As the world grapples with escalating environmental megatrends, such as urbanicity, climate change, pollution and social injustice, challenges to brain health and mental health continue to emerge. The Nature Mental Health Commission on Earth, Brain and Health (EBHC) was formed to bring an interdisciplinary approach to consider the technological advances and innovative solutions that can be applied to mitigate environment-related mental health harms and to improve mental health and wellbeing for individuals and communities worldwide.

A global and transdisciplinary challenge

Over the past decades, we have witnessed the emergence of pervasive global environmental mega-trends, including adversity caused by anthropogenic climate change, extreme weather  events, urbanicity, pollution, natural resource shortages, biodiversity loss and ecosystem collapse, as well as socioeconomic disparity and increasing societal polarisation. The stress, trauma and displacement caused by such environmental adversities will likely increase the prevalence of mental illnesses, including anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) substance use and depression.

However, it remains unclear how exposure to environmental mega-trends affect brain and mental health across the lifespan and across the globe, and how they interact with their individual psychosocial environment. This is where the EBH Commission comes in.

The goals of the EBHC

The goal of the Earth Brain Health Commission is to focus and boost research on environment-related mental health by organizing scientific knowledge, identifying critical gaps and questions and providing actionable solutions to improve targeted prevention and early intervention at the societal and individual level worldwide.

This is structured into two main goals:

1. Organizing scientific knowledge: The Commission aims to bring together specialized environmental insights on key issues such as human-induced climate change, pollution, land 3 use, urbanization, biodiversity, and social injustice.
2. Provide actionable solutions: The Commission will propose actionable solutions for the development of intervention and policy and their implementation.

Structure of the EBHC

The Earth Brain Health Commission is structured into five Work Packages:

Work Package 1:

The relation of macroenvironment with brain and behaviour

Environmental factors such as urbanization, land use type, reduced green and blue spaces, air pollution, noise, extreme weather, and socio-economic conditions, significantly impact brain and mental health, particularly among vulnerable populations. For example, climate related features such as urban heat islands amplify heat exposure, worsening anxiety and depression, while limited green and blue spaces are associated with less psychological relief. Air and noise pollution, along with frequent extreme weather events, harm brain function and mental well-being. Moreover, socioeconomic disparities across regions and demographic groups exacerbate these risks, disproportionately affecting vulnerable populations. Addressing these challenges requires innovative, inclusive, and transdisciplinary research, alongside integrated policies, digital health tools, and community-driven solutions. These strategies are crucial for monitoring, mitigating, and adapting to the mental health impacts of climate change while aligning with the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

Members:

Work Package 2:

Brain and Biological mediators of the effects of environment on behaviour

We summarize recent efforts to investigate biological mechanisms that link macro-environmental exposures – air pollution, climate change and events, urbanicity, regional socioeconomic status – to mental traits, neurophysiological and molecular changes, and behavior. We focus on emerging methods that are key for studying biological mechanisms in large epidemiological and population cohorts as well as experimental cell and animal models that complement these data. Core work is carried out in humans using non-invasive imaging techniques (e.g., MRI, fMRI) ecological momentary assessment, and molecular profiling of biomaterials (e.g., omics assessment of blood). We also discuss insights from cell culture, organoid, and animal models that evaluate and directly test causal hypotheses drawn from correlations observed in human cohorts. Finally, we leverage these observations to draw several recommendations.

Members:

Work Package 3:

Innovations in data analytics to foster environmental mental health

The environmental effects on mental health are widely recognised and the breadth and diversity of data streams used to study these effects have exploded in recent years, including clinical studies, population registry data, brain imaging, multi-omics and remote sensing satellite and smartphone monitoring. This places increasing demands on the analytical techniques used to predict health outcomes, stratify cohorts and understand the causal associations between environmental exposures and mental health outcomes. We review the analytical approaches that have been applied to this problem, encompassing classical statistical approaches, machine learning, generative modelling, explainable artificial intelligence and the estimation of generic foundation models that can provide generic representations useful for many clinical tasks. We outline a series of key challenges for the field, under the continually changing regulatory landscape and identify promising avenues for future development.

Members:

Work Package 4:

Targeted interventions to reduce environmental risk for mental illness

A range of factors influence the degree to which a given in individual will be exposed to an environmental stressor, and how that stressor will affect their mental health. Differential impacts on vulnerable populations are wrought either through vulnerable population-specific risk pathways from environmental stressors to poor mental health, or vulnerable population-specific patterning in risk exposures. While more evidence is needed on mental health interventions which target specific environmental stressors, there is some evidence to support interventions which prioritise a focus on environmental exposures, and the mechanisms, pathways, and the interaction between risk and protective factors over time, targeting the changing dynamics of person-health-environment relationships.

Members:

Work Package 5:

Society, culture, participation, and ethics

Mental health is an important asset that most humans value highly. It is also a crucial factor driving how groups and societies function. Understanding how the environment, natural, social, digital, or otherwise, affects the brain and mental health is thus not just an important scientific endeavour, but it has significant social, cultural, and ethical implications. This work package examines discussions that can influence research on the relationship of the environment and mental health and can shape the way in which scientific research questions, but also policy-oriented outputs are expressed and perceived.

Members:

Publications

2024

• Neidhart, M., Kjelkenes, R., Jansone, K. et al.
  A protocol for data harmonization in large cohorts
  Nat. Mental Health 2, 1134–1137 (2024) // https://doi.org/10.1038/s44220-024-00315-0
• Nees, F., Renner, P., Holz, N.E. et al.
  Large-scale population data enrichment in mental health research
  Nat. Mental Health 2, 1124 – 1127 (2024) // https://doi.org/10.1038/s44220-024-00316-z
• Desrivières, S., Miller, A., Mathey, C.M. et al.
  Multi-omics analyses of the environMENTAL project provide insights into mental health and disease
  Nat. Mental Health 2, 1131–1133 (2024) // https://doi.org/10.1038/s44220-024-00317-y
• Goldblatt, R., Holz, N., Tate, G. et al.
  “Urban-Satellite” estimates in the ABCD Study: Linking Neuroimaging and Mental Health to Satellite Imagery Measurements of Macro Environmental Factors
  medRxiv [Preprint] (2024) // https://doi.org/10.1101/2023.11.06.23298044
• Stahl, B.C., Ogoh, G., Schumann, G. et al.
  Rethinking ethics in interdisciplinary and big data-driven neuroscience projects
  Nat. Mental Health 2, 1128–1130 (2024) // https://doi.org/10.1038/s44220-024-00320-3
• Schumann, G., Barciela, R., Benegal, V. et al.
  The Earth, Brain, Health Commission: how to preserve mental health in a changing environment
  Nat. Mental Health 2, 1121 – 1123 (2024) // https://doi.org/10.1038/s44220-024-00314-1