During the COVID-19 pandemic, governments around the world implemented measures such as stay-at-home orders and school closures to limit the spread of the virus. For children going through adolescence, these lockdowns occurred during a critical period marked by emotional, behavioral, and social development.
New research from the University of Washington, published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of SciencesThey found that the pandemic caused accelerated brain maturation in adolescents, most notably in females. The study showed that brain maturation, as measured by cortical thinning, accelerated by an average of 4.2 years in girls and 1.4 years in boys. Patricia Kuhl, senior author and co-director of the UW Institute for Learning and Brain Sciences (I-LABS), noted:
“We think of the COVID-19 pandemic as a health crisis, but we know that it has produced other profound changes in our lives, especially in the lives of adolescents.”
Cortical thinning, the natural reduction in the thickness of the outer layer of the brain, is associated with aging and stress. This process is often linked to an increased risk of neuropsychiatric disorders, such as anxiety and depression, that appear during adolescence, especially in girls. Chronic stress, such as that caused by the pandemic, may have contributed to this accelerated thinning.
The UW study, which began in 2018 to track typical adolescent brain development, had to take a turn after the pandemic. Neva Corrigan, senior author of the study, explained: “Once the pandemic started, we started thinking about what brain measures would allow us to estimate what the pandemic lockdown had done to the brain.” When the researchers examined the teens again in 2021, they found that brain thinning was much more pronounced in women and affected all brain regions, while in men it was limited to the visual cortex.
Kuhl suggested that the difference in impact may be related to girls’ greater reliance on social interaction for emotional support.
“What the pandemic seems to have really done is isolate girls. All teenagers were isolated, but girls suffered more. It affected their brains much more dramatically.”
While the cerebral cortex is unlikely to thicken again, Kuhl said recovery could occur through slower thinning over time as normal social interactions return. “It is possible that there will be some recovery,” he said, but added, “It is also possible to imagine that brain maturation will continue to be accelerated in these adolescents.”
Kuhl noted that while the pandemic offered a test case for understanding adolescent brain fragility, many questions remain unanswered. “All the best research asks new, profound questions, and I think that’s what we’ve done here.”
MQ is committed to researching the long-lasting effects of COVID-19, such as the PHOSP-COVID study.
