The COVID-19 pandemic caused significant medical illnesses but also caused social disruptions. For example, teens had to take classes from home and were not able to be with their peers.
The stress and disruption in their lives resulted in an increase in mental disorders and negative behaviors. Researchers discovered that one reason was the “unusually accelerated brain maturation in adolescents …” (All quotes are from a journal article from PNAS; access to the article is listed at the end of this blog.)
It is normal for teens to undergo pruning of their brains. Unneeded nerves are removed, resulting in thinning of the brain’s cortex. During the pandemic, this process was speeded up so those teens’ brains changed to be like older brains on MRI scans.
This acceleration was more prominent in girls (average of 4.2 years) compared to boys (average of 1.4 years).
The researchers noted that this shows “greater vulnerability of the female brain, as compared to the male brain, to the lifestyle changes resulting from the pandemic lockdowns.”
It is well-established that teens had a marked increase in mental health disorders during the pandemic. The researchers point out that the acceleration in brain aging may be a “neurophysiological mechanism for adolescent mental health and other behaviors associated with the lockdowns.”
The article notes that mental health professionals and researchers will need to monitor teens for any possible long-term effects from accelerated brain maturation.
The article provided by Corrigan NM et al was published September 9, 2024 by The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). It can be accessed by typing this into a search engine:
https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2403200121
Peter M. Hartmann, MD
Family Medicine & Psychiatry
