Teens who survived the COVID-19 pandemic are aging their brains too quickly

Studies show that the brains of adolescents who survived the COVID-19 pandemic show signs of premature aging, reports TheGuardian.

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Researchers compared pre-pandemic MRI scans of 81 U.S. teens between November 2016 and November 2019 with data from 82 teens taken between October 2020 and March 2022, during the pandemic but after removal of restrictions.

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After matching 64 participants in each group for factors including age and gender, the team found that physical brain changes that occurred during adolescence, such as cortical thinning and growth of the hippocampus and amygdala, were stronger in the post-pandemic group than in group before the pandemic. This suggests that such processes have accelerated. In other words, their brains aged faster. “The difference in brain age was about three years — we did not expect such a significant increase, because the isolation lasted less than a year,” said Ian Gottlieb, professor of psychology at Stanford University and first author of the study. In an article for the journal Biological Psychiatry: Global Open Science, the team reports that the participants — a representative sample of teenagers from the California Bay Area — initially agreed to take part in a study looking at the impact of early life stress on mental health during puberty. As a result, participants were also assessed for symptoms of depression as well as anxiety. The post-isolation group reported more severe mental health issues, specifically anxiety symptoms, depression, and internal problems.

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Gottlieb said the findings were in line with those of other researchers studying the impact of the pandemic on adolescent mental health. “Deteriorating mental health in adolescents is accompanied by physical changes in the brain, likely due to the stress caused by the pandemic,” he suggested. But it's not yet clear whether the decline in mental health seen in the study is due to faster brain aging.

“We don’t know yet – we are just starting to rescan all participants at age 20, so we will have a better idea of ​​whether these changes persist or start to decrease over time,” Gottlieb explained. “In older people, these brain changes are often associated with cognitive decline. It is not yet clear what they mean in adolescents. But this is the first demonstration that mental health difficulties during the pandemic appear to be related to stress and changes in brain structure,” he added.

Michael Thomas, professor of cognitive neuroscience at Birkbeck University of London, who was not involved in the study, said the scientific study confirmed the difficulties teenagers faced during the pandemic, in particular increased anxiety and depression. But, he noted, it's hard to see how differences in brain structure size matter to current or future behavior.

“Large-scale measurements of the brain do not tell us about the detailed patterns that govern behavior. I would say that it is very speculative to assume what the long-term effects will be, and whether these brain changes will be permanent or disappear, ”he said. Thomas stressed, among other things, that it is unclear whether the potential impact will necessarily be negative. He noted that some of the accelerated changes the team reported were related to higher performance, such as on intelligence tests.

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“It is known that London taxi drivers also have larger hippocampi,” he said in conclusion. “In short, this is interesting data that suggests that the pandemic may have had a profound effect on adolescents, enough to affect brain structure measures. But these data cannot tell us whether negative long-term effects are inevitable or whether brain plasticity will allow this generation to bounce back.”

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