Prince.Skeletor
Don’t Be Like He-Man
Adolescents’ brains underwent accelerated ageing during the covid-19 pandemic, and the effect was more pronounced in girls than in boys
Adolescents showed signs of accelerated brain ageing during the covid-19 pandemic, with girls affected to a greater degree than boys. The finding suggests that lockdown measures had a disproportionately detrimental influence on adolescent brain development in girls.
As the brain develops, the outer layer of its largest region, called the cerebral cortex, begins to thin. Hardships in childhood, such as experiencing violence or neglect, accelerates the rate of this thinning, which raises the risk of mental health problems.
To understand whether the covid-19 pandemic affected this process, Neva Corrigan at the University of Washington in Seattle and her colleagues compared brain scans from children and teens taken before and during the pandemic.
In 2018, they collected brain scans from 109 adolescents aged 9, 11, 13, 15 and 17 years old. They used this data to create a model of how cortical thickness changes between 9 and 17 years of age. Then, in 2021 during the pandemic, they scanned the brains of a separate cohort of 54 adolescents aged 12, 14 and 16 years old. All the participants were from the greater Seattle area and had similar socioeconomic statuses, says Corrigan.
By comparing brain scans collected from participants in 2021 to their model, the researchers found adolescents experienced increased cortical thinning during the pandemic, and that girls were more affected than boys. On average, the accelerated thinning in girls was equivalent to ageing four years whereas in boys, it was equal to ageing almost two years.
“We’re not the first group to report cortical thinning associated with the covid-19 pandemic in adolescents. But this is the first study that has shown these gender differences,” says Corrigan, who presented these findings at a November meeting of the Society for Neuroscience in Washington DC.
Accelerated cortical thinning also affected more brain regions in girls than in boys. On average, girls had increased thinning in 35 regions whereas boys did so in just three. The brain regions most impacted among girls were those involved in processing visual information, particularly faces. The only overlap between boys and girls involved accelerated thinning in the right and left lateral occipital cortex, regions that help us recognise objects.
“Females are a lot more reliant on their social network for feelings of self-identity and emotional support,” says Corrigan. “It could be that during the pandemic, that isolation had more of a detrimental effect on the female brain simply because they are more attuned to peer relationships, which are so critical to their brain development.”
“We think you get cortical thinning like this in the brain as a result of exposure to stress,” says Ian Gotlib at Stanford University, who was not involved in the study. “[These findings] show that the stress of a pandemic does seem to affect brain development, and that’s really important.” For instance, children and teens with accelerated cortical thinning are more vulnerable to developing mental health problems like depression.
Yet it is unclear, based on these findings, if these increases in cortical thinning are permanent. “It is quite possible that the [acceleration] stops or slows to kind of put these adolescents back on a normal trajectory of brain development,” says Gotlib. We won’t know until further follow-up studies are completed, he says.
www.newscientist.com
Adolescents showed signs of accelerated brain ageing during the covid-19 pandemic, with girls affected to a greater degree than boys. The finding suggests that lockdown measures had a disproportionately detrimental influence on adolescent brain development in girls.
As the brain develops, the outer layer of its largest region, called the cerebral cortex, begins to thin. Hardships in childhood, such as experiencing violence or neglect, accelerates the rate of this thinning, which raises the risk of mental health problems.
To understand whether the covid-19 pandemic affected this process, Neva Corrigan at the University of Washington in Seattle and her colleagues compared brain scans from children and teens taken before and during the pandemic.
In 2018, they collected brain scans from 109 adolescents aged 9, 11, 13, 15 and 17 years old. They used this data to create a model of how cortical thickness changes between 9 and 17 years of age. Then, in 2021 during the pandemic, they scanned the brains of a separate cohort of 54 adolescents aged 12, 14 and 16 years old. All the participants were from the greater Seattle area and had similar socioeconomic statuses, says Corrigan.
By comparing brain scans collected from participants in 2021 to their model, the researchers found adolescents experienced increased cortical thinning during the pandemic, and that girls were more affected than boys. On average, the accelerated thinning in girls was equivalent to ageing four years whereas in boys, it was equal to ageing almost two years.
“We’re not the first group to report cortical thinning associated with the covid-19 pandemic in adolescents. But this is the first study that has shown these gender differences,” says Corrigan, who presented these findings at a November meeting of the Society for Neuroscience in Washington DC.
Accelerated cortical thinning also affected more brain regions in girls than in boys. On average, girls had increased thinning in 35 regions whereas boys did so in just three. The brain regions most impacted among girls were those involved in processing visual information, particularly faces. The only overlap between boys and girls involved accelerated thinning in the right and left lateral occipital cortex, regions that help us recognise objects.
“Females are a lot more reliant on their social network for feelings of self-identity and emotional support,” says Corrigan. “It could be that during the pandemic, that isolation had more of a detrimental effect on the female brain simply because they are more attuned to peer relationships, which are so critical to their brain development.”
“We think you get cortical thinning like this in the brain as a result of exposure to stress,” says Ian Gotlib at Stanford University, who was not involved in the study. “[These findings] show that the stress of a pandemic does seem to affect brain development, and that’s really important.” For instance, children and teens with accelerated cortical thinning are more vulnerable to developing mental health problems like depression.
Yet it is unclear, based on these findings, if these increases in cortical thinning are permanent. “It is quite possible that the [acceleration] stops or slows to kind of put these adolescents back on a normal trajectory of brain development,” says Gotlib. We won’t know until further follow-up studies are completed, he says.
Girls’ brains aged unusually rapidly during the covid-19 pandemic
Adolescents’ brains underwent accelerated ageing during the covid-19 pandemic, and the effect was more pronounced in girls than in boys
www.newscientist.com
