Data for: Differences in interference processing and frontal brain function with climate trauma from California’s deadliest wildfire

As climate change accelerates extreme weather disasters, the mental health
of the impacted communities is a rising concern. In a recent study of 725
Californians, we showed that individuals that were directly exposed to
California’s deadliest wildfire, the Camp Fire of 2018, had significantly
greater chronic symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder, anxiety and
depression than control individuals not exposed to the fires. Here, we
study a subsample of these individuals: directly exposed (n = 27),
indirectly exposed (who witnessed the fire but were not directly impacted,
n = 21), versus age and gender-matched non-exposed controls (n = 27). All
participants underwent cognitive testing with synchronized
electroencephalography (EEG) brain recordings. In our sample, 67% of the
individuals directly exposed to the fire reported having experienced
recent trauma, while 14% of the indirectly exposed individuals and 0% of
the non-exposed controls reported recent trauma exposure. Fire-exposed
individuals showed significant cognitive deficits, particularly on the
interference processing task and greater stimulus-evoked fronto-parietal
activity as measured on this task. Across all subjects, we found that
stimulus-evoked activity in left frontal cortex was associated with
overall improved interference processing efficiency, suggesting the
increased activity observed in fire-exposed individuals may reflect a
compensatory increase in cortical processes associated with cognitive
control. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study to examine
the cognitive and underlying neural impacts of recent climate trauma.