With Covid, the brains of adolescents have aged faster

The pandemic and lockdowns have accelerated the maturation process of the adolescent brain, which, during the Covid period, has “aged” by 4.2 years in females and 1.4 years in males. This is what emerges from a research coordinated by the University of Washington in Seattle and published in the journal of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States (Pnas) which underlines that phenomena of this type are often observed in children who are chronically subjected to strong stress and sometimes have negative effects on future mental health

Thinner cerebral cortex

“Adolescence is a time of dramatic changes in emotional, behavioral, and social development,” the researchers explain. Along with this, numerous changes occur in the structure of the brain. Among them is the thinning of the cerebral cortex, the outer layer of tissue in the brain. This is the indicator that the researchers measured in 160 children who were involved in a study that began in 2018.

Tests performed on adolescents in 2021 showed excessive thinning of the cerebral cortex, compared to reference models. This, according to the team, could be related precisely to the restrictions on social relations during the first phase of the pandemic.

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For girls the phenomenon is more marked

The phenomenon was much more marked in girls, in whom the thinning extensively affected the cerebral cortex, while in boys it was limited to the visual cortex. For the researchers, the differences could be linked to the different value that social relationships have for the two genders.

“For women, peer relationships are vital to the development of personal identity; they also rely on these relationships for emotional support more than men,” the researchers write, who call for monitoring the mental health of boys.