Biological anthropology has increasingly recognized the importance of energy trade-offs to patterns of energy allocation, which impacts functions like reproduction, growth, and immunity. While various methods are available to study energetics, an important gap remains: empirical quantification of brain energy use, particularly during development. Although other fields have studied the brain’s energy use in adults, peak brain energy requirements, in absolute and relative terms, occurs during childhood when the brain accounts for a lifetime peak of 66% of the body’s resting energy expenditure. The trade-offs required to sustain these high energy costs help explain features of human life history, like our unusually slow growth rate. Exploring variation in these dynamics across individuals or populations is hampered by challenges of brain metabolism measurement, which generally requires clinical imaging facilities. Here we present a novel approach employing electroencephalography (EEG) as a proxy for brain energy use. The energy devoted to the brain is largely used in neuronal functions related to synapse firing. EEG is a direct measure of this activity, and thus holds promise as a cheap, portable means of measuring brain energy use in field settings. We discuss our preliminary work that replicates the pattern of findings generated using PET and MRI. By integrating the brain into the study of human energetics, these methods represent the crucial next step in our field and hold promise to advance our understanding of how brain energy use varies, the trade-offs that result, and impacts of these dynamics on patterns of growth and life history

Understanding the role of chemical exposure within human variation is increasingly important as synthetic chemicals become a major presence in nearly all environments, are environmentally- and biologically persistent, disproportionately impact vulnerable populations, and are of growing concern as augmenting natural disasters increase the gravity of exposure to toxins. Silicone wristbands are a non-invasive method for capturing passive individual exposure to non-polar and semi-polar organic chemicals including but not limited to volatile organic compounds, hydrophilic contaminants containing ketone, carboxyl, and hydroxyl groups, pesticides, flame retardants, and per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), among others. Thus, silicone wristbands can capture exposures to multiple chemicals via various pathways (touch, drift, air (respiratory), and water)– data that can be used to further our understanding of the direct and indirect contributions of exogenous chemicals on human biological outcomes such as endocrine disruption, growth and development, and risk for disease. In this talk, I provide an overview of the novel silicone wristband method including its validation, field and laboratory protocols, and measuring capabilities. I briefly describe a case study from research among girls in rural Costa Rica to highlight the method’s practicality in the field and advantages including the mitigation of cultural and bureaucratic challenges associated with traditional invasive biological measures and active sampling methods. To conclude, I summarize the method’s utilization in relative research and discuss its role within new conceptual frameworks and the future of human biological investigations.

Videogames are played by 42% of the global population. They are an interactive media, and they involve participants in the constant construction of knowledge. Its importance for human biology has been increasing and expanding, ranging from scientific dissemination to knowledge production. “Commercial” games, originally intended solely for entertainment, can be used by scientists in teaching and scientific dissemination. Dawn of Man is a good example. There is an increasing number of games created by scientists with the aim of promoting scientific dissemination and science education. Adaptopia is a great example. I worked as a consulting scientist in this game. Players are also helping scientists solve scientific problems while participating in online games developed for this purpose. Videogames can become a tool for citizen science – when there is a contribution to science through the participation of members of society. Foldit is the main example of a videogame being used for citizen science. This year, one of the winners of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry was Demis Hassabis, for his achievements in using AI to predict and design the structure of proteins. He started his research on AI when he was a game designer for the game Black & White. Just as in real life, where learning becomes increasingly complex and necessary for survival, the basic structure of videogames inherently directs the player toward this learning progression. The examples presented here demonstrate that videogames can be a powerful tool, both for scientific dissemination and to knowledge production.

Human biology has long recognized the necessity of understanding health as situated within a variety of complex systems—biological, psychological, social, and environmental—and as a product of the interaction of these systems across the lifespan and generations. Longitudinal cohort studies have permitted the measurement of these social and environmental systems and have increasingly incorporated field-friendly biological measures. However, cohort research faces growing challenges, including increasing data collection costs, dropping response rates, and shrinking funding, suggesting that alternatives are needed. We propose the use of existing demographic, medical, and socioenvironmental data to create synthetic birth cohorts as an exciting path forward for understanding the key exposures shaping health and well-being across the lifespan. We use pilot data from >6000 births from two counties in North Carolina in 2019 to test whether electronic medical records (EMRs) can be used to create representative cohorts and linked to other administrative data to measure maternal and child health outcomes across the first 1000 days of life. Our results suggest that EMRs from large health care systems can provide representative data, be linked to a variety of measures like area deprivation, environmental pollution and access to social services, and document significant associations between social and environmental factors and poor health outcomes, such as maternal hypertension and preterm birth. Partnered with more intensive, “higher touch” survey and qualitative research, this sampling approach has the potential to broaden study horizons, permitting comprehensive examination of multiple determinants of health from pre-conception onwards and identify new avenues of intervention.