The cognitive consequences of a climate disaster: a study
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THE climate changes they are destined to change our planet. Extreme weather events, such as heat or cold waves, abnormal rainfall and snowfall, will become increasingly common. And with them fires, avalanches, floods and similar catastrophic events, capable of deeply marking those who experience it firsthand. A study by the University of California San Diego investigated which cognitive and psychological changes they unite those who survive one climate catastrophe. Information that in the future – the authors explain – will unfortunately prove to be extremely useful for helping these people, in a world where natural disasters will become more and more commonplace.
The researchers’ analyzes focused, in particular, on what the Americans have renamed campfire: the largest fire ever to break out in California, which in 2018 completely destroyed the town of Paradise, 26 thousand souls, just north of Sacramento, causing 85 confirmed civilian deaths. Already in 2021 American researchers had studied the psychological consequences of the fire experienced by survivors, demonstrating a high incidence of PTSD, chronic anxiety and depression.
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In the new research, they therefore decided to verify whether the psychological effects of trauma were associated with changes on a cognitive level, in functions such as memory, learning and reasoning. To do so, they involved 27 people directly exposed to the flames, 21 affected only indirectly by the fire, and 27 people comparable in age and gender to the previous groups, but totally unrelated to the campfire.
Subjecting all the volunteers to a battery of cognitive tests, the researchers found that all those who were directly or indirectly exposed to the fire showed less ability to ignore distractions. Thanks to a real-time analysis of their brain waves, carried out using an electroencephalogram, the researchers also identified differences that seem to confirm what was observed on a cognitive level: the frontal lobe of the volunteers who had experienced the fire was in fact more active in tests in which he was asked to try to ignore distractions, a detail that could demonstrate one greater difficulty in completing the taskrevealed byactivation of an area of the brain involved in cognitive efforts.
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The findings are not in themselves unexpected, given that similar problems are observed in a great many people who survive accidents and other stressful events. It is however the first study that investigated the characteristic disturbances that develop following a catastrophe related to climate change. And they can therefore be useful for formulating targeted strategies with which to help the victims of similar disasters in the future. A goal towards which the team of Californian researchers is already working.
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