A new study suggests that pandemic-related stressors physically aged teen brains, according to a study. The new findings suggest that the neurological and mental effects of the pandemic on teenagers may have been even worse, the study said. They were published in the journal Biological Psychiatry: Global Open Science. In 2020 alone, reports of anxiety and depression among adults have increased by more than 25 percent compared to previous years, according to a study by Stanford University in the US.
“We already know from global research that the pandemic has adversely affected the mental health of youth, but we didn’t know what, if anything, it physically did to their brains,” said first author Ian Gotlib of Stanford University. . Changes in brain structure occur naturally as we age, Gotlib noted. During puberty and early adolescence, children’s bodies experience increased growth in both the hippocampus and the amygdala, areas of the brain that control access to certain memories and help modulate emotions. At the same time, the tissues in the cortex, an area involved in executive functioning, become thinner.
By comparing MRI scans from a cohort of 163 children taken before and during the pandemic, Gotlib’s study showed that this developmental process accelerated in adolescents when they experienced a Covid-19 lockdown. Until now, he said, these kinds of accelerated changes in “brain age” have only occurred in children who have experienced chronic adversity, whether due to violence, neglect, family dysfunction or a combination of multiple factors. Although these experiences are associated with poor mental health outcomes later in life, it’s unclear whether the changes in brain structure the Stanford team observed are related to changes in mental health, Gotlib noted.
“It’s also unclear whether the changes are permanent,” said Gotlib, who is also director of the Stanford Laboratory for Neurodevelopment, Affect, and Psychopathology (SNAP) at Stanford University. “Will their chronological age eventually catch up with their ‘brain age’? If their brains remain permanently older than their chronological age, it is unclear what the future outcomes will be. “In a 70- or 80-year-old, you would expect some cognitive and memory problems based on changes in the brain, but what does it mean for a 16-year-old when their brain is aging prematurely?” Gotlib said.
Originally, Gotlib explained, his study was not designed to look at the impact of Covid-19 on brain structure. Before the pandemic, his lab recruited a cohort of children and adolescents from the San Francisco Bay Area to participate in a long-term study of depression during puberty—but when the pandemic hit, he was unable to perform regularly scheduled MRI scans. these youth, the study said.
