Published

Life Sciences

Global urbanicity is associated with brain and behaviour in young people

Published on - Nature Human Behaviour

Authors: Jiayuan Xu, Xiaoxuan Liu, Qiaojun Li, Ran Goldblatt, Wen Qin, Feng Liu, Congying Chu, Qiang Luo, Alex Ing, Lining Guo, Nana Liu, Huaigui Liu, Conghong Huang, Jingliang Cheng, Meiyun Wang, Zuojun Geng, Wenzhen Zhu, Bing Zhang, Weihua Liao, Shijun Qiu, Hui Zhang, Xiaojun Xu, Yongqiang Yu, Bo Gao, Tong Han, Guangbin Cui, Feng Chen, Junfang Xian, Jiance Li, Jing Zhang, Xi-Nian Zuo, Dawei Wang, Wen Shen, Yanwei Miao, Fei Yuan, Su Lui, Xiaochu Zhang, Kai Xu, Longjiang Zhang, Zhaoxiang Ye, Tobias Banaschewski, Gareth Barker, Arun Bokde, Herta Flor, Antoine Grigis, Hugh Garavan, Penny Gowland, Andreas Heinz, Rüdiger Brühl, Jean-Luc Martinot, Eric Artiges, Frauke Nees, Dimitri Papadopoulos Orfanos, Herve Lemaitre, Tomáš Paus, Luise Poustka, Lauren Robinson, Sarah Hohmann, Juliane Fröhner, Michael Smolka, Henrik Walter, Robert Whelan, Jeanne Winterer, Kevin Patrick, Vince Calhoun, Mulin Jun Li, Meng Liang, Peng Gong, Edward Barker, Nicholas Clinton, Andre Marquand, Le Yu, Chunshui Yu, Gunter Schumann

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Urbanicity is a growing environmental challenge for mental health. Here, we investigate correlations of urbanicity with brain structure and function, neuropsychology and mental illness symptoms in young people from China and Europe (total n = 3,867). We developed a remote-sensing satellite measure (UrbanSat) to quantify population density at any point on Earth. UrbanSat estimates of urbanicity were correlated with brain volume, cortical surface area and brain network connectivity in the medial prefrontal cortex and cerebellum. UrbanSat was also associated with perspective-taking and depression symptoms, and this was mediated by neural variables. Urbanicity effects were greatest when urban exposure occurred in childhood for the cerebellum, and from childhood to adolescence for the prefrontal cortex. As UrbanSat can be generalized to different geographies, it may enable assessments of correlations of urbanicity with mental illness and resilience globally.