Researchers from the University of Washington found that Covid lockdowns—including school closures, cancelled sports events and stay-at-home orders— prematurely aged teen brains by as much as four years.
Published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the new study provides fresh proof of how disturbances to daily routines can have led to behavioural issues, rising eating disorders, anxiety and depression in teenage males and girls.
Using MRIs in 2018, researchers at the university’s Institute for Learning & Brain Sciences (I-LABS) started the project to observe how the brain structure of 160 teenagers from the Seattle area evolved across time. Starting the study, the participants—a virtually equal mix of males and girls—ranged in age from 9 to 19.
Lead researcher Patricia Kuhl, co-director of I-LABS, indicated that brain scan follow-up couldn’t be done until 2021 following Covid lockdowns starting in 2020. They thus turned the emphasis of the research to investigate how the lockdowns had changed teenage brain architecture.
Measuring the thickness of the cerebral cortex, the outer layer of tissue in the brain regulating higher level activities including reasoning and decision-making, they found the brains of teen boys had prematurely aged 1.4 years. Based on the brain scans of the females, the study indicated accelerated ageing of 4.2 years.
Teenagers’ “aged” brains during COVID lockdowns, fresh studies indicate
As we get older, the cerebral cortex thins automatically. Additionally causing similar alterations in the brain is chronic stress. But there was far more thinning than the researchers anticipated in the three-year interval between the first scan and the follow-up.
“As we age, the thinning of the cortex is associated with less fast-processing time, less flexible thinking, with all of the things we associate with ageing,” Kuhl said. “Every teenage student displayed this accelerated ageing generally.”
Teenage girls showed more obvious ageing. The scans revealed that the thinning was observed all over the female brain in thirty areas spanning both hemispheres and all lobes. The thinning in the male brain was restricted to just two areas, both in the occipital lobe, which influences facial recognition and recall, depth perception and distance perception.
Kuhl suggested that variations in the value of social interaction for females versus boys could explain the higher influence on girls. Boys often congregate for physical exercise and sports. Adolescent girls could find emotional support and self-identity in personal interactions.
Said Dr. Ellen Rome, head of adolescent medicine at Cleveland Clinic Children’s Hospital, “When girls and women are stressed, there is a natural response to get together and talk about it; we release oxytocin and other neurotransmitters that make us feel better.” Rome has no part in the latest studies.
In daily life, what does the early brain ageing entail for young individuals who negotiated epidemic constraints, usually alone in their rooms, attending classes over Zoom or missing social events?
Exists a long-term risk associated with “pandemic brains”?
The studies do not indicate that the lockdowns resulted in brain alterations; mental health problems among youngsters were already increasing even before Covid. It does, however, imply, according to Kuhl, that thinner the cortex is, the more anxiety, sadness, and other behavioural problems one has.
Another brain scan study with Stanford University revealed comparable reductions in cortical thickness in teenage brains under Covid lockdown. The Stanford researchers likened the stress and disturbances of the epidemic to early trauma including abuse, neglect, and family instability.
Everyone had a terrible time during the epidemic, Kuhl remarked. For young people, at a period of their life when their emotional and behavioural development is already undergoing significant changes, the alone was much more detrimental for their emotional well-being.
She stated, “The pandemic was dramatic and unexpected, of course, but dramatic and catastrophic in a way, not only for physical health, but mental health.”
Several studies on youth mental health from the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention published in 2021 found hitherto unheard-of degrees of despondency and suicide thoughts among teenage males and girls. Though 53% of young women in high school said they are still experiencing ongoing melancholy, a CDC poll published in early August revealed a modest improvement in teen mental health.
According to Dr. Jonathan Posner, a Duke University School of Medicine psychiatry professor, there are times in brain development when particular forms of learning are more successful. For instance, learning a language is far simpler while a small child than when an adult.
Not included in the new study, Posner added, “The teenage years are hugely important for social development.” “Without those social contacts, there is simply not the chance for that social learning.”
