by Covid lockdowns, such as school closures, cancellations of sporting activities and stay-at-home orders, prematurely brainwashed teenagers by up to four years, University of Washington researchers found.
The new study, published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, is more evidence of how disrupting daily routines can contribute to behavioral problems, an increase in eating disorders, anxiety and depression in young girls and boys.
Scientists at the university’s Institute for Learning & Brain Sciences (I-LABS) began the study using MRIs in 2018 to see how the brain structure of 160 teenagers from the Seattle area developed over time. The participants, an almost equal number of boys and girls, ranged in age from 9 to 19 at the start of the study.
Lead researcher Patricia Kuhl, co-director of I-LABS, said that after the Covid lockdown began in 2020, they were unable to do follow-up brain scans until 2021. So they shifted the focus of the study to find out what impact which the greens had. adolescent brain structure.
By measuring the thickness of the cerebral cortex – the outer layer of tissue in the brain that controls high-level brain functions such as reasoning and decision-making – they found that teenage boys’ brains were 1.4 years premature. Brain scans of the girls showed accelerated aging of 4.2 years, according to the study.
The cerebral cortex naturally thins as we age. Chronic stress can also cause similar changes in the brain. But in the three-year period between the first scan and the follow-up, there was much more thinning than the researchers expected.
“As we age, the thinning of the cortex is associated with less processing time, less flexible thinking, all the things we associate with aging,” Kuhl said. “All teenagers generally showed this accelerated aging.”
For teenage girls the aging was more pronounced. The thinning was found to be widespread throughout the female brain, occurring in 30 regions across both hemispheres and all lobes, the scans showed. In the male brain, the thinning was limited to just two regions, both in the occipital lobe, which affect distance and depth perception, face recognition and memory.
The greater impact on girls may be due to differences in the importance of social interaction for girls and boys, Kuhl said. Boys tend to gather for sports and physical activity. Adolescent girls may rely on personal relationships for emotional support and identity.
“When girls and women are stressed, there’s a natural response to come together and talk about it, and we release oxytocin and other neurotransmitters that make us feel better,” said Dr. Ellen Rome, chief of adolescent medicine at Cleveland Clinic Children’s Hospital. Rome was not involved in the new research.
What does premature brain aging mean in the daily lives of young people who have navigated pandemic restrictions, often alone in their rooms, taking classes over Zoom or seeking social connections?
Are there long-term risks to ‘pandemic outbreaks’?
The research does not prove that the brain changes were caused by the locks – mental health disorders were on the rise among children even before the Covid. It does suggest, however, that thinning of the cortex can be linked to increased anxiety, depression and other behavioral disorders, Kuhl said.
Another 2022 brain scan study from Stanford University showed similar changes in cortical thickness in teenage brains during Covid restrictions. Stanford researchers compared the stress and disruption of the pandemic to childhood trauma such as violence, neglect and family dysfunction.
The pandemic has been a traumatic time for everyone, Kuhl said. For young people — at a time in their lives when there are already major changes in their emotional and behavioral development — the isolation caused more damage to their emotional health.
“The pandemic was dramatic and unexpected, of course, but dramatic and devastating in a way, not just for physical health, but for mental health,” she said.
As of 2021, several youth mental health reports from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have shown unprecedented levels of hopelessness and suicidal thoughts among teenage girls and boys. In early August, a CDC survey released found a slight improvement in teenage mental health, although 53% of young women in high school say they still feel constant sadness.
In brain development there are periods of time when certain types of learning are most effective, said Dr. Jonathan Posner, professor of psychiatry at Duke University School of Medicine. For example, it is much easier to learn a language as a young child than as an adult.
“The teenage years are extremely important for social development,” said Posner, who was not part of the new study. “If you don’t have those social interactions, you don’t have the opportunity to have that social learning.”
The cortex cannot regrow and continues to shrink throughout life. It remains unclear whether the “pandemic brains” of young people who are aging prematurely could be at higher risk for disorders such as ADHD and depression and, perhaps, even diseases such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s, said Kuhl.
Seattle mother Karin Zaugg Black, 54, saw how the pandemic affected her two children during more than a year of isolated school classes. Her daughter Delia, 14, was in seventh grade; Sam, 10, in fourth place.
Delia especially felt the loss of social interaction.
“When she thinks back to that time, she was definitely like, ‘Yeah, it was really hard. I felt like I didn’t have any friends, and that was really hard,’” Black said of her daughter’s time during the pandemic.
“His social skills are behind him. You know, they lost that ability to navigate the social life with their peers,” she said.
The good news is that Delia, now a senior in high school, has regained much of the social interaction muscle she lost during the pandemic.
Experts say the loss need not be permanent if young people’s interactions and social connections have recovered since the pandemic.
“Fortunately, the kids are very resilient, and we can get them back there and help them recover,” Posner said. “But we also don’t want to fool ourselves that this was nothing. It has had a significant impact on growth and development.”
This article was originally published on NBCNews.com
