The aging of the brains of teenagers has been accelerated by the stress of living through Pandemic Lockups. The effects are similar to those that have been observed in the past.
Even if you've left adolescence behind, there's a lot of reorganization going on in the brain, even without a global Pandemic and the associated lockdowns.
"We already know from global research that the Pandemic has adversely affected mental health in youth, but we didn't know what, if anything, it was doing to their brains," says psychologist Ian Gotlib.
The team looked at the brain scans of 81 children who were taken before and after the Pandemic, as well as the brain scans of 83 children who were taken during the Pandemic.
The researchers compared the children from both groups using factors such as sex, age, pubertal status, ethnicity, early life stress, and socio-economic background.
The brain aging process seemed to have accelerated in the post-pandemic group, according to the scans. The equivalent of three years of brain aging was caused by lockdown periods of less than one year.
It's not clear if poor mental health is related to brain age. The study can't tell us if the changes will be permanent or if they will cause more mental health problems.
Gotlib wondered if their chronological age would catch up to their brain age. It's not clear what the future will hold if their brain is permanently older than their chronological age.
If a 16-year-old's brain is aging early, what does it mean for their cognitive and memory skills?
It's going to take more research to figure it out. As people get older, the team will continue to look for changes in brain structure and mental health issues.
The young people were recruited to take part in a study on depression. The research was in a different direction after the arrival of COVID-19 and the need for a pause in the study.
This neurological aging acceleration will have to be taken into account in other brain studies. Picking out the differences between the kids that came before them and the kids that have lived through the Pandemic will be difficult.
There is no one who hasn't experienced the Pandemic. There isn't a real control group
The research was published in a journal.
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