Teenagers’ brains ageing faster during pandemic

WHILE often in your teen years you may have dismissed your parents’ claims that you are growing up too quickly, is there perhaps some biological truth behind these statements?

As we dealt with a seemingly endless combination of lockdowns and restrictions, time went inevitably slower. As we were forced to cope with extended periods of isolation and drastic changes from our typical every day, long-term implications were expected both scientifically and socially. In recent studies analysing teenagers’ brains both prior to and post-pandemic, eye-opening discoveries have been made in relation to both the maturation of the brain, as well as shifting mental health experiences.

and the “peri-COVID” (post-pandemic participants). It is important to note that while these groups consisted of different people, participants were crucially matched on a range of factors, and the success of this is evident in the assessment that no significant differences were found in participant characteristics. Overall, researchers hypothesised that the peri-COVID group were more likely to report severe mental health issues and assessed to have more mature brains.

the results they produced closely correlated with the rating of physicians.

Once results were released, the initial hypothesis proved accurate in both aspects. Professor Ian Gotlib (Stanford University) notes how this “tracks with mental health difficulties we’re seeing”, as the study found reduced cortical thickness and a larger amygdala volume.

A study that began in the San Francisco Bay area prior to the pandemic already sought to investigate the impact of early-life stress on psychobiology — specifically during puberty. As “virtually all youth experienced adversity” because of the pandemic, the focus of the study shifted to analysing the consequential impacts of living through history. Researchers chose to compare two groups, labelled the “pre-COVID”

Due to restrictions, in-person assessments were unable to be conducted; however, to ensure internal validity, multiple methods of assessment were chosen, including both controlled and quasi-controlled environments. To track physical changes a total of 128 MRI scans were taken, with half taken prior to the pandemic and the remaining half at the end of 2020. For mental health, participants were asked to record symptoms on a Children’s Depression Inventory as well as an anxiety tracker that produced a MASC score (Multidimensional Anxiety Scale for Children). Though one may argue methods of self-report for this study may have been unreliable, the inventories used were said to have high convergent validity, essentially meaning

Though these are expected developments with age, the pandemic appears to have acted as a catalyst, quickening the rate at which this occurred. Impacts identified were said to be like the experience of early-life adversity on the brain. Raw data also indicated that the post-pandemic group had increased anxiety symptoms and differed significantly from the pre-pandemic group. Furthermore, the peri-COVID group had an older brain age despite being matched on numerous characteristics.

In the following discussion, researchers suggest that there was undeniable “accelerated brain maturation in the context of the pandemic.” As we await further investigations and publications, we are led to question whether these are short-term impacts or if these