Kids had a tough time adapting to their new at-home reality during the pandemic. School shutdowns, isolation from friends, the palpable stress of living in a society pushed nearly to its breaking point — as a group, adolescents experienced significant levels of anxiety and depression.
But the impacts of the pandemic on young brains went even further than that. As you age, the outer layer of tissue on your brain (called the cerebral cortex) thins out. And researchers at the University of Washington found this layer thinned much faster than normal for teenagers during the pandemic.
The researchers, who had started a study of adolescent brain development before the pandemic, were able to compare that pre-pandemic data to brain scans done about a year after the lockdown.
Based on how quickly the cerebral cortex thinned out between brain scans, the brains of girls aged 4.2 years faster than expected. The brain age of boys accelerated 1.4 years. Because of differences in how the two groups socialize, the scientists suspect females experienced the effects of isolation more acutely than males.
The researchers say their findings demonstrated the need for continued support for adolescents who lived through the pandemic because accelerated brain aging has been linked to increased risk of mental health disorders.
The research is published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences here.
New research from the University of Washington’s Institute for Learning & Brain Sciences, or I-LABS, found the COVID-19 pandemic lockdowns resulted in unusually accelerated brain maturation in adolescents. This maturation was more pronounced in females, as seen on the left.
Courtesy of University of Washington I-LABS
In these All Science Snapshots, “All Science. No Fiction.” creator Jes Burns features the most interesting, wondrous and hopeful science coming out of the Pacific Northwest.
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