Neurosustainability: How the Built Environment Shapes Brain Health, Ageing & Resilience

What if “healthy ageing” isn’t just about genes, diet, or healthcare — but also about the streets you navigate, the air you breathe, the noise you sleep through, and the buildings you spend 90% of your life inside? “This conversation makes the case for a shift: from sustainability as a materials-and-energy conversation, to neurosustainability — designing environments that protect sleep, reduce stress load, support movement, and build cognitive resilience across the lifespan.” Jackie De Burca Host: Mohamed Hesham Khalil – Creator of the Neurosustainability theory, architect and neuroscience researcher, and a PhD candidate at the University of Cambridge. Guest: Professor Agustín Ibáñez — Director of Global Research Networks at the Global Brain Health Institute (Trinity College Dublin) and Scientific Director of the Latin American Brain Health Institute Guest: Burcin Ikiz — Neuroscientist and brain health advocate working at the intersection of climate, equity, and brain outcomes Podcast cover Brain health isn’t only personal. It’s environmental. And the places we live, move, and work in can either build resilience — or quietly chip away at it. “The built environment… is the space where we most of the time live, move, think and also thrive or become sick.” — Professor Agustín Ibáñez In the third part of this mini-series about neurosustainability, Cambridge scholarship student, Mohamed Hesham Khalil sits down with Professor Agustín Ibáñez and Burcin Ikiz to connect the dots between climate, inequality, urban design, and the ageing brain. They unpack the exposome and zoom into the built environment as the missing middle layer we can actually change. “Scientists sometimes we use strange words for simple things.” — Professor Agustín Ibáñez What is the exposome? The exposome is the full set of environmental influences (physical, social, and economic) that shape our health and behaviour over time — and why the built environment is the missing “mesoscale” link between global forces (like climate change and inequality) and individual brain outcomes (like cognition, dementia risk, and mental health). “I always see that the built environment itself maybe hasn’t been given the same attention… because… people spend around 90 percent of time indoors.” Mohamed Hesham Khalil Th...