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The pandemic has had a huge impact on teenagers – many studies have documented issues related to their mental health, social lives and more.
Now, a new study suggests that these phenomena have caused the brains of some teenagers to age much faster than they normally would – 4.2 years faster in girls and 1.4 years faster in boys on average, according to the study published Monday in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy. of Sciences.
By being the first to provide data on aging differences by sex, the study adds to the existing body of knowledge provided by two previous studies on the Covid-19 pandemic and accelerated brain aging in adolescents.
“The findings are an important wake-up call about the vulnerability of the teenage brain,” said senior study author Dr. Patricia K. Kuhl, Bezos Family Foundation Endowment Chair in Early Childhood Learning and codirector of the Institute for Learning and Brain Sciences at the University of Washington in Seattle, via email. “Teenagers need our support now more than ever.”
Significant socio-emotional development occurs during adolescence, along with significant changes in brain structure and function. The thickness of the cerebral cortex naturally increases during childhood, decreases steadily during adolescence and continues to decrease throughout the human lifespan, the authors wrote.
The researchers first planned to track normal adolescent brain development over time, starting with MRIs the authors performed on participants’ brains in 2018. They planned to follow up with another scan in 2020.
The pandemic delayed the second MRI — when the 130 participants based in Washington state were between 12 and 20 years old — by three to four years. The authors excluded adolescents diagnosed with a developmental or psychiatric disorder or who were taking psychotropic medication.
The team used the pre-pandemic MRI data to create a “normative model” of how 68 brain regions are likely to develop during typical adolescence, to which they could compare the post-pandemic MRI data and see if it from expectations. This normative model is consistent with the normative growth charts used in pediatric offices to track the height and weight of young children, the authors said. Other researchers have also used it to study the effects of circumstances or conditions such as socioeconomic disadvantage, autism, depression, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder or traumatic stress.
The study showed accelerated cortical thinning in the post-pandemic adolescent brain – occurring in 30 brain regions across both hemispheres and in all lobes for girls, and in only two regions for boys. The prevalence of thinning was 43% and 6% of the brain regions studied for girls and boys, respectively.
The study is not a major publication, as the authors acknowledge,” but it adds to our knowledge on the subject, Dr. Max Wiznitzer, professor of pediatrics and neurology at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine, said by email. Wiznitzer was not involved in the research.
How adversity affects the brain
The study has several important limitations, including that senior author Kuhl contributed the study to the journal, meaning she was also the editor of the study and was able to select, to restrictions, who peer-reviewed it.
And since the pandemic affected everyone, the authors didn’t have a control group, which is why they had to use normative modeling to approximate normal controls, Wiznitzer said — “which is not as good as real controls. but it’s probably the best they can do.”
The authors also did not have data on participants’ family jobs, financial or food security or participants’ exercise, sleep or dietary habits, they said. It is also unknown whether the participants who may have had Covid-19 may have contributed to the results.
“Theirs is a good study, but even then it probably doesn’t have a large enough sample to say that the sex difference in brain aging is a reliable finding,” said Dr. Ian Gotlib, author of a 2022 study on the subject and director of the Stanford Neurodevelopment, Affect, and Psychopathology Laboratory at Stanford University, via email.
However, “after reading this paper we examined gender differences in the data we used in our study — the same direction of gender differences as reported by the authors, but not statistically significant with our slightly smaller sample,” said Gotlib, who had nothing to do with it. the study.
The regions with the greatest acceleration in thinning among girls are linked to social cognitive functions, such as recognizing and processing faces and expressions; processing social and emotional experiences; the ability to have empathy and compassion; and language comprehension, according to the study. The affected regions in boys’ brains are involved in the processing of objects in the visual field as well as faces.
Based on previous research, the authors think the results may be due to a phenomenon known as the “stress acceleration hypothesis”. This hypothesis suggests that development, in a high-stress environment, may shift toward earlier maturity to protect the brain’s emotional circuits and regions involved in learning and memory—reducing damage that harms structural development.
Salivary cortisol levels have also been reported to correlate with cortical thickness in the frontal lobe in human adults. Sex differences may be due to the different effects of stressors on boys and girls based on what is important to each, the authors said.
What can you do
Another factor the researchers don’t yet know is whether these effects on the brain are permanent, Kuhl said.
“The brain doesn’t recover and the brain doesn’t get thicker, we know that, but one measure of whether teenagers show recovery after the pandemic is over and social normality is fully restored, is the thinness of slower brain,” Kuhl said. “If that was the case, we could say that the teenage brain showed some recovery. That’s a study we can do in the future.”
Ensuring that young people are supported in their mental health is vital, said Gotlib. Encourage personal quality time, limit social media use and watch for behavioral changes that indicate a change in mental health or mood so you can intervene as soon as possible, Wiznitzer said.
It’s important to recognize that while “the pandemic is largely over,” its effects remain, Gotlib said.
“A full return to ‘normal’ may never happen,” Kuhl said via email. “These are all strong reminders of human vulnerability and the importance of investing in the science of prevention and preparation for the next (inevitable) pandemic.”
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