Abstract
Air pollution is increasingly recognized as a critical factor influencing human health and behavior, including brain function. While long-term physical effects are well-documented, immediate impacts on cognitive performance in typical indoor environments remain underexplored. This is especially relevant today, as people spend more time indoors where air quality fluctuates due to ventilation, temperature, and occupancy. Studies have linked pollutants-PM2.5, CO2, VOCs-to cognitive issues such as reduced attention, memory loss, and slower reactions. However, systems capable of real-time assessment under realistic conditions are rare. Most research relies on large-scale epidemiology or static lab setups, lacking integration between environmental sensing and behavioral evaluation. To bridge this gap, we developed an intelligent lab environment to study how indoor variables affect cognition during controlled exposures. We found that certain factors-especially elevated temperaturecorrelate with improved performance in memory, logic, and coordination tasks, challenging assumptions that thermal stress impairs cognition. These findings reveal that air quality and cognition interact in complex, domain-specific ways. For instance, logical reasoning improved at higher temperatures, while attention slightly declined. Our work demonstrates the feasibility of combining smart environmental monitoring with real-time cognitive assessment and machine learning. This lays the groundwork for designing adaptive indoor environments to enhance cognitive performance in workplaces, classrooms, and healthcare settings. It also opens new directions for research on personalized environmental optimization based on individual cognitive profiles.