Meet the Principal Investigator: Dr. Brittany Taylor
Brittany Taylor Ph.D. sits in her sunlit office with a 3-D printed model of a magnetoencephalography system on her desk. MEG, for short, is a neuroimaging system Dr. Taylor and several of her colleagues specialize in that measures and records brain activity of human participants in their neuroscience research studies.
Dr. Taylor is the Neurodiversity Laboratory Director at the Institute for Human Neuroscience at Boys Town National Research Hospital. Her research focuses on the impact environmental toxins such as radon – an odorless yet prevalent toxic gas - can have on attention systems in the brains of children and adolescents. Radon is associated with inflammation in the body, which can alternatively have negative consequences.
Dr. Taylor stumbled upon the focus of her research while she and her husband were looking to buy a home during her postdoctoral fellowship. Every house their relator showed them, he rather enthusiastically pointed out the presence of a radon mitigation system saying, “This is a high radon state, you’ve got to watch out for radon here, you should really have [your home] tested for radon.” This repetitive cue encouraged Dr. Taylor to investigate what radon was and why it was a big deal. Turns out, radon is responsible for being the second leading cause of lung cancer in the United States.
Fast forward three years to her first published peer-review paper on radon, titled “Chronic Home Radon Exposure is Associated with Higher Inflammatory Biomarker Concentrations in Children and Adolescents”. Dr. Taylor’s research linked chronic home radon exposure with specific biomarkers associated with neuroinflammation that have been implicated in psychopathologies such as depression and anxiety.
In her current work, Dr. Taylor seeks to tease apart the where, when, how, and why neuroinflammation occurs in the brains of children by adding several elements to enrich her data. These add-ons include blood samples, additional inflammation biomarkers, and a small watch-shaped bracelet that acts like a sponge for nearby air pollutants. Children who participate in her studies will wear this bracelet for one week, after which collaborators at Yale University will extract and identify over 400 potential air pollutant compounds they come in contact with. This information will help uncover whether other environmental toxins amplify or partner with radon to cause inflammation in children and their families.
The potential impacts of her research visibly excite this vibrant scientist as she beams when describing her big ideas. Among them, Dr. Taylor hopes to make a local impression on legislation regarding radon mitigation in the city of Omaha, an area saturated with alarmingly high detection of radon. While there has already been movement in Nebraska legislation requiring all new homes to have a radon mitigation system installed, there is still the issue of current homes that cannot afford the sometimes costly system, leaving families without a solution. It is Dr. Taylor’s goal to expand this service across the city. “If my dreams come true and I am able to have this wonderful, amazing impact where we are able to start mitigating homes, I don’t have radon to study! Which would be the best problem to have. I would love to have that problem!” says Dr. Taylor. But until then, she presses on.