RIGHT SPEAK: Lockdowns During the COVID Pandemic May Have Prematurely Aged Teenage Brains, Study Finds; Study Shows How the Pandemic May Have Affected Teens’ Brains, and other C-Virus related stories

Lockdowns during the COVID pandemic may have prematurely aged teenage brains, study finds:

Many people experienced disruptions to their daily lives and routines due to stay-at-home orders and limited social interactions during the COVID-19 pandemic, with this being shown to particularly affect the well-being of young people.

Now, a study by researchers at the University of Washington has found that the COVID-19 pandemic may have caused unusual changes in adolescents’ brain development, resulting in accelerated brain maturation.

"We were really surprised to find that in our post-COVID data the cortical thickness was a lot lower than it would be expected from the pre-COVID models, and we found this lower thickness was more pronounced and in a lot more regions in the brain in females than in males," Neva Corrigan, lead author of the study and research scientist at the Institute for Learning & Brain Sciences at the University of Washington, told Euronews Health.

Initially, back in 2018, the researchers aimed to track normal brain changes in teenagers as part of a longitudinal study involving 160 participants aged nine to 17.

However, due to the pandemic, follow-up testing was delayed until 2021, prompting the researchers to shift their focus to how the pandemic might have affected brain development instead.

The researchers measured brain maturation by looking at how much the cerebral cortex, which is the outer layer of the brain, thinned over time.

The findings were published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Effects of the COVID pandemic on teenagers' brains --->READ MORE HERE

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Study shows how the pandemic may have affected teens’ brains:

The pandemic’s effects on teenagers were profound — numerous studies have documented reports of issues with their mental health, social lives and more.

Now, a new study suggests those phenomena caused some adolescents’ brains to age much faster than they normally would — 4.2 years faster in girls and 1.4 years faster in boys on average, according to the study published Monday in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

By being the first to contribute details on aging differences by sex, the study adds to the existing body of knowledge provided by two previous studies on the Covid-19 pandemic and accelerated brain aging among adolescents.

“The findings are an important wake-up call about the fragility of the teenage brain,” said senior study author Dr. Patricia K. Kuhl, the Bezos Family Foundation Endowed Chair in Early Childhood Learning and codirector of the Institute for Learning and Brain Sciences at the University of Washington in Seattle, via email. “Teens need our support now more than ever.”

Significant socioemotional development occurs during adolescence, along with substantial changes to brain structure and function. The thickness of the cerebral cortex naturally peaks during childhood, steadily decreases throughout adolescence and continues to decrease through one’s lifespan, the authors wrote.

The researchers originally intended to track ordinary adolescent brain development over time, starting with MRIs the authors conducted on participants’ brains in 2018. They planned to follow up with them for another scan in 2020.

The pandemic delayed the second MRI by three to four years — when the 130 participants based in Washington state were between ages 12 and 20. The authors excluded adolescents who had been diagnosed with a developmental or psychiatric disorder or who were taking psychotropic medications.

The team used the pre-pandemic MRI data to create a “normative model” of how 68 regions of the brain would likely develop over typical adolescence, to which they could compare the post-pandemic MRI data and see if it deviated from expectations. This normative model is analogous to the normative growth charts used in pediatric offices to track height and weight in young children, the authors said. It has also been used by other researchers to study the effects of circumstances or conditions such as socioeconomic disadvantage, autism, depression, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder or traumatic stress. --->READ MORE HERE