Everyone has had a difficult time during the COVID-19 pandemic. And although the virus itself poses the most significant overt danger to public health, a recent study has uncovered the effect that living under lockdown conditions has had on the minds of teenagers.
According to IFLScience's report, youngsters who had their minds scanned after being confined for a long time showed signs of advanced brain aging compared to those who had been tested before the outbreak.
Impact on Youth
Global studies have shown that the pandemic has had a negative impact on young people's mental health. But until recently, it was unclear if the pandemic was also impacting their brains.
Study author Ian Gotlib and his colleagues at Stanford University observed a startling tendency after comparing brain scans of 82 teenagers done in March 2022 with those of 81 age-matched controls from before the epidemic.
"We found that youth assessed after the pandemic shutdowns had more severe internalizing mental health problems, reduced cortical thickness, larger hippocampal and amygdala volume, and more advanced brain age," the researchers wrote.
Experts' Discovery
During this time of life, the cortex typically thins while the hippocampus and amygdala grow in size.
There seems to be a worrying growth acceleration among children who have experienced lockdowns since this process appears to be amplified in these individuals.
"It appears, therefore, that the pandemic not only has adversely affected adolescents' mental health, but also has accelerated their brain maturation," the researchers said in their accounts.
Premature aging of the brain is rare and only occurs in children who are exposed to severe, long-term stresses like neglect, assault, or family conflict.
The report's authors know that childhood traumatic events are linked to worse mental health as an adult. What they do not know is how long-lasting the effects of lockdowns on teenagers' brain development will be.
Additionally, it is not apparent whether the changes are permanent, according to Gotlib.
Based on changes in the brain, you would anticipate some cognitive and memory impairments in a 70 or 80-year-old. Yet, the question is, "what does it mean for a 16-year-old if their brains are aging prematurely?"
Next Move
Teenagers whose mental health was evaluated after a lockdown showed increased rates of despair and anxiety in addition to the brain alterations seen during the experience.
The authors of the research want to keep tabs on the same group of children over the next several years to see whether or not the pandemic has had a long-lasting impact on their cognitive and emotional maturity.
"Will their chronological age eventually catch up to their 'brain age'?" Gotlib pondered.
He added that it is impossible to predict what would happen if their mental age always catches up to, or even exceeds, their actual age.
The results of this study have been published in the open-access journal Biological Psychiatry: Global Open Science.
