AAMorph9ExPE

Context: 

Early exposure to environmental pollutants is suspected of leading to neurodevelopmental disorders, causing anxiety and depressive disorders, and having repercussions on brain functions through mechanisms that are still poorly understood, which impact neuroplasticity during neurodevelopment. Some neuroimaging studies tend to show that frontolimbic regions and structures such as the amygdala and hippocampus exhibit volume decreases associated with certain air pollutants (PM2.5) or environmental pollutants (bisphenol A) (Zundel et al., 2022). At the IAB in Grenoble, the team led by Dr. R. Slama and Dr. C. Philippat has set up a mother-child cohort, the SEPAGES cohort, to study the relationships between early exposure to various pollutants and child neurodevelopment. Multiple urine samples were collected during pregnancy and after birth to obtain precise measurements of exposure to these pollutants. Currently, brain MRI acquisitions for these children at age 9 are underway, with a projected cohort of 200 full-term children. The relationships between exposure markers and brain morphometry can therefore be studied using advanced statistical methods.

Student's contributions:

The work carried out by the student will involve setting up automatic brain morphometry analysis (volume of cortical and subcortical gray matter, volume and shape of the hippocampi and subregions, extraction of main sulci, etc.), applying these analyses continuously, and, using the cohort obtained by the end of May 2025, exploring the relationships between these morphometric and exposure measurements.

This internship is divided into 3 parts:

• Literature review to assess existing work, evaluate target regions of particular interest, and search for specific software tools to use.
• Setting up an automatic morphometric analysis pipeline. Testing on new subjects. Evaluating the quality of measurements.
• Exploration of the relationships between morphometric measurements and environmental exposure measurements.