Pre- and postnatal exposure to legacy environmental contaminants and sensation seeking in Inuit adolescents from Nunavik
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Despite extensive evidence from cohort studies linking exposure to lead (Pb), mercury (Hg) and polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) to numerous cognitive outcomes in children and adolescents, very few studies addressed reward sensitivity, a key dimension of emotional regulation. The present study aimed to examine associations between pre- and postnatal exposure to these environmental neurotoxicants and sensation seeking, a behavioral feature of reward. A total of 207 Inuit adolescents (mean age = 18.5, SD = 1.2) from Nunavik, Canada, completed the Brief Sensation Seeking Scale (BSSS-4) and Sensation Seeking- 2 (SS-2), two self-report questionnaires assessing proneness to sensation seeking. Prenatal, childhood and adolescent exposure to Pb, Hg and PCBs were measured in cord blood at birth and blood samples at 11 years of age and at time of testing. Multiple linear regression models were performed, potential confounders including participants' sociodemographic characteristics and nutrient fish intake were considered. Results showed that higher child blood levels of Pb (b = -0.18, p = 0.01) and PCB-153 (b = -0.16, p = 0.06) were associated with lower BSSS-4 total scores, while cord and adolescent blood PCB-153 levels were significantly related to lower SS2 total scores (b = -0.15, p = 0.04; b = -0.24, p = 0.004). Such associations persisted after further adjustment for co-exposure to concurrent contaminants. These associations were influenced by self-report positive affect and marginally moderated by sex. Sex differences were only observed for child PCB exposure, with the association for risk-taking sensation seeking observed only in girls but not in boys. Further research is warranted to assess the extent to which reduced sensation seeking in chronically exposed individuals affects their behaviors, well-being, and emotional regulation.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".