Lockdowns prematurely aged teenagers’ brains, study suggests

Teenage girls’ brains may have prematurely aged by up to four years during the Covid pandemic, an American study suggests.

Adolescent boys weren’t immune either with their brain’s also showing signs of undue wear and tear, albeit by only one-and-a-half years.

Experts suggested the difference was due to lockdown‘s social restrictions having a disproportionate impact on teenage girls.

Researchers from the University of Washington looked at 160 MRI scans taken from a cohort of 9-to-17-year-olds collected in 2018, and then compared these to scans to 130 taken post-pandemic, 2021-2022.

They found a process called cortical thinning — where the organ effectively rewires itself between childhood and adolescence — was far more advanced than it should be amongst pandemic teens.

Whilst cortical thinning does occur naturally some studies have linked accelerated thinning to being exposed to anxiety or stress and greater risk of developing these disorders in life.

It’s not yet clear if the observed advanced thinning is permanent or if it will have any negative impact on teenagers’ long-term health or educational aspirations.

The study, published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, also found differences in which parts of the brain were ageing in boys and girls.

For example, while both sexes had advanced ageing in the part of the organ related to processing visual information, girls also saw premature thinning of areas linked to emotions, interpreting faces and understanding language.

These are all areas critical to facilitating effective communication.

Study author Professor Patricia Kuhl, an expert in learning and brain sciences at Washington, said researchers had been shocked at the extent of the difference between boys and girls.

She told the New York Times ‘a girl who came in at 11, and then returned to the lab at age 14, now has a brain that looks like an 18-year-old’s;.

Professor Khul also told the Guardian  that she believes part of the difference reflects teenage girls’ greater reliance on social groups than their male counterparts.

‘Girls chat endlessly and share their emotions. They are much more dependent on the social scene for their wellbeing and for their healthy neural, physical and emotional development.’

She added the findings were ‘reminder of the fragility of teens’ and suggested parents find the time to talk to their children about their experiences of the Covid pandemic.

‘It’s important they invite their teens for a coffee, for a tea, for a walk, to open the door to conversation. Whatever it takes to get them to open up.’

The study is the latest to suggest the Covid pandemic, and by extent the lockdown restrictions that separated family and friends for months, took a toll on young’s people’s mental health.

However, some experts have cautioned against the over-interpretation of the study’s findings.

Dr Bradley S. Peterson, a peadiatric psychiatrist and brain researcher at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles, who was not involved in the study was among these.

He noted a number of limitations, one of which is that though the authors were keen to link the changes to the social isolation of lockdowns other possibilities exist such as increased screen-time and use of social media and less exercise.

Dr Peterson also said that the observed thinning may not be a bad thing and it could ‘represent nature’s adaptive response in the brain that conferred greater emotional, cognitive and social resilience’.