The pandemic has changed young people
In 2018, Kuhl and his colleagues began a study of 160 adolescents between the ages of 9 and 17 to assess changes in brain structure during typical adolescence. In particular, the team decided to investigate changes in the outer layer of the brain called the cerebral cortex, which becomes thinner with age.
However, by 2020, it became clear that the study participants’ teenage experiences were far from “normal.”
“As soon as the pandemic started, we started thinking about whether brain measurements would allow us to estimate what the pandemic was doing to the brain,” adds Neva Corrigan, lead author of the study and a scientist at I-LABS. “What does it mean for our teenagers to be home and not in their social groups — no school, no sports, no gatherings?”
Chronic stress and negative life events are known to accelerate changes in the cerebral cortexwhich is associated with an increased risk of developing mental health disorders, especially among young women. What impact might a global pandemic have on these changes in brain structure?
Using data from 2018, the team created a model showing the expected trajectory of cortical atrophy in these adolescents. The participants were then invited to have a second brain scan in 2021 to compare how their brains had actually changed during that time.
On average, adolescent brains showed significantly accelerated cortical atrophy, with particularly pronounced effects in females. While boys showed cortical thinning only in the visual cortex, girls showed thinning throughout the brain.
Researchers believe this gender disparity may be due to differences in the way girls and boys are socialized and the social stress they may experience due to social media.
Isolation is harmful to young people
“Teenagers are really walking a tightrope trying to figure out their lives,” Kuhl notes. “They’re under enormous pressure. Then a global pandemic hits, and their normal outlets for stress release disappear. What’s left is criticism and pressure on social media.”
“The pandemic seems to have isolated girls,” she said. “All teenagers have been isolated, but girls have suffered more. It’s affected their brains much more dramatically.”
Kuhl emphasizes that while it is possible that these teens may experience some improvement, such as a slower decay processIt is unlikely that the cerebral cortex will thicken again.
However, the study has several serious flaws. First, although global lockdowns were associated with brain changes in these adolescents, there were many other variables during this period that could have also contributed.
“The study shows that women’s brains post-lockdown showed, overall, greater cortical thinning than expected,” said Rebecca Sheriff, a consultant psychiatrist and senior clinical research fellow at the University of Oxford.
He adds that the study excluded a large proportion of young people because of their mental health history.
— Participants were excluded if they had ever been diagnosed with a developmental or psychiatric disorder, which, considering that as many as one in five adolescents has a probable mental disorder, seems like a major omission. Also, the study did not include information on other sources of stress, so we cannot say whether there are other possible causes of brain changes, Sheriff said.
Distance from search results
According to Richard Bethlehem, assistant professor of neuroinformatics at the University of Cambridge, it is difficult to apply these findings to the general population.
“First, the sample sizes are quite small, so we must be careful not to generalize these results to all adolescents,” the statement notes.
— Secondly, there is not much information about these samples, other than the fact that they were collected at different times during the pandemic.therefore we cannot assume that the blockade is definitely the cause of these reported brain changes.
— For example, many other things could have happened during the pandemic, such as a COVID-19 infection or a series of infections. There are many factors that were not modeled or documented in this paper, Bethlehem says.
Of course, more work is needed to confirm whether the lockdowns themselves were directly responsible for these effects, but the study contributes to our understanding of the fragility of the adolescent brain.
“Our research raises a whole new set of questions about what accelerated brain aging means,” Kuhl said. “All the best research raises new and profound questions, and I think that’s what we’ve done here.”
Text published in the American magazine “Newsweek”. Title, lead and subtitles by the editors of “Newsweek Polska”.
