Mapping the Operational Exposome: Blast, Radiation, and Chemical Burden in Lifespan Brain Health and Disease

Environmental exposure is treated as a background variable in most neuroscience, yet for certain occupations, particularly military service, it is the dominant one. Service members, first responders, and industrial workers may accumulate repeated low-level exposures to blast, ionizing radiation, heavy metals, combustion products, solvents, and fuel vapors across careers that can span decades. In some cases, they also experience acute, high-dose exposures concurrently. These cumulative burdens can induce genomic, epigenomic, metabolomic, and other molecular and physiological changes. How these phenomena converge to shape neurological trajectories, from prenatal development through aging, remains poorly defined.Multi-omics profiling, quantitative neuroimaging, and population-scale cohort data now make it possible to study these influences as interacting systems rather than as ranked single-agent risks. This Research Topic assembles work that defines how co-occurring exposures shape brain structure, function, and long-term disease risk, and connect mechanism to measurable outcome. We are especially interested in contributions that move past single-agent toxicology toward an integrative neuro-exposome that potentially resolves gene-by-environment interaction, sex-specific vulnerability, dose-timing dependence, and the molecular pathways linking exposure to aberrant neurological outcomes. Work that pairs human cohort evidence with tractable model systems, and that treats the brain in dialogue with the gut, immune, and vascular compartments, is also welcome.We welcome Original Research, Review, Mini Review, and Perspective articles addressing, but not limited to:• repeated low-level blast and mixed mechanical-chemical exposure in neurotrauma and long-term neurodegenerative risk• radiation and heavy metal neurotoxicity, biodosimetry, and medical countermeasure evaluation• inhaled and dermal chemical exposures, including combustion products, fuels, solvents, and pesticides, and their links to Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease, ALS, and other neurological diseases• gene-environment interaction and sex differences across exposed human populations• prenatal and early-life exposure, including maternal occupational exposure, and neurodevelopmental outcomes• microbiome dynamics and CNS interaction with the gut, immune, and cardiovascular systems• discovery and validation of exposome biomarkers, including specificity limits imposed by peripheral sources of CNS-attributed markers• emerging model systems of the neuro-exposome: iPSC-derived cerebral organoids, multi-electrode and label-free readouts, biofidelic phantoms, and quantitative neuroimaging as exposure readouts Topic editors: Tony Yuan, Ryan Limbocker Source: https://www.frontiersin.org/research-topics/82950/mapping-the-operational-exposome-blast-radiation-and-chemical-burden-in-lifespan-brain-health-and-disease