Teens' brains aged faster during the first year of the pandemic, study says, and stress may be to blame
Teens' brains aged faster during the first year of the pandemic, study says, and stress may be to blame
The brains of U.S. teens have physically changed during the COVID-19 pandemic, aging faster than normal, a new study says.
The young study participants also reported more severe symptoms of anxiety, depression and what scientists call internalized problems -- meaning feelings of sadness, low self-esteem and fear and trouble regulating their emotions -- after the first year of the pandemic.
Dozens of studies have found that teens' and adolescents' mental health has suffered during the pandemic. They have been taken out of school, away from their friends and familiar support structures, and had to live with the uncertainty and fear that came with the coronavirus. Many parents lost jobs. Millions of children lost parents and grandparents to COVID-19.
The study, published Thursday in the journal Biological Psychiatry: Global Open Science, is one of the first to look at the physical changes in the brain brought by that the stress and anxiety.
The research comes out of a larger study in which scientists were trying to understand the gender differences in depression among adolescents.
Eight years ago, they set out with a plan to take MRI scans of 220 children ages 9 to 13 every two years. The team had completed two sets of scans when the pandemic interrupted their research, and they weren't able to start scanning again until the end of 2020.
When their research was interrupted, the team decided it would be interesting to study the effects that this stressful event was having on kids' developing brains. The pre-pandemic scans would help them make this comparison.
The researchers matched children in the same demographics -- including gender, age, exposure to stress and socioeconomic status.
To find the average brain age, they put the MRI scans through a modelthat pools data from other scans.
The researchers compared the MRI scans of 128 children. Half the scans were taken before the pandemic and the other half at the end of 2020.
They found that the children who had lived through the first year of the pandemic had brain ages that were older than their chronological age.
The brains that had gone through the beginning of the pandemic had growth in the area that can help regulate fear and stress, called the amygdala, and in the hippocampus, the area of the brain that can controls access to memories. Tissues had thinned in the part of the brain that controls executive functioning, the cortex.
A child's brain changes naturally over time, but research has found that these physical changes can speed up when a person goes through significant adversity in childhood.
Studies have shown that people who are exposed to violence, neglect, poverty and family problems early in life have faster brain aging and can have problems with their mental health later on.
Ian Gotlib, lead author of the new study, said the research team had expected to find the problems with anxiety, depression and internalized problems. "The pandemic has not been kind to adolescent mental health," said Gotlib, a psychology professor at Stanford University.
But they weren't exactly sure what they would find with the MRI scans.
"It's always interesting to do research like this when you're not really sure what's going to happen," Gotlib said. "These effects were interesting and happened pretty quickly.
"This was just a one-year shutdown, so we didn't know that the effects on the brain would be this pronounced after that short a period of stress," he added. "It tracks with the mental health difficulties that we're seeing."
What isn't clear, he said, is whether the brain changes will have an impact later in life. The research team plans to scan the same kids later to track their brain development. There is a chance that their brain changes could have just been an immediate response to a stressor that will normalize over time, he said.
The team also plans to look at the 10 children in the study who had COVID-19 to see whether there is a different effect. The physical differences seem to be "a little more pronounced" in the children who had COVID, Gotlib said.
Dr. Max Wiznitzer, diversion chief of pediatric neurology at UH Rainbow Babies & Children's Hospital, said the changes in the brain were interesting, but what's important is whether the mental health problems persist.
"The anatomy is not important. It's the functionality that's important," said Wiznitzer, who wasn't involved in the research. "The clinical consequence here is the functional impact, the mental health condition clinically and how it's functioning and how you deal with it."
With appropriate mental health interventions, problems like anxiety or depression can be managed. "The brain has that capacity for reorganization -- or call it improvement, if you will," Wiznitzer added.
Gotlib hopes parents and guardians keep in mind that although lockdowns and school closures may be over, the mental health consequences may be lingering.
"Be sure that your adolescent or your teen is getting any help that he or she, that they, might need if they're experiencing symptoms of depression, anxiety" or being withdrawn.
Sign up to receive the most important updates in your inbox two times a week
This undated electron microscope image made available by the U.S. National Institutes of Health in February 2020 shows the Novel Coronavirus SARS-CoV-2, orange, emerging from the surface of cells, green, cultured in the lab. (NIAID-RML via AP)
The Biden administration is considering a plan to shoot down a large Chinese balloon suspected of conducting surveillance on U.S. military, by bringing it down once it is above the Atlantic Ocean where the remnants could potentially be recovered, according to four U.S. officials.
Convicted murderer Daniel Jolivet, in prison for the past 30 years, has maintained his innocence since the day he was arrested. W5 reviews the evidence he painstakingly assembled while behind bars. W5's documentary 'Buried Evidence' airs Saturday at 7 p.m. on CTV.
The massive white orb drifting across U.S. airspace has triggered a diplomatic maelstrom and is blowing up on social media. A look at what's known about the balloon crossing the U.S. and what isn't.
The oldest preserved vertebrate brain has been found in a 319-million-year-old fossilized fish skull that was removed from an English coal mine over a century ago.
In the field of cancer treatment, nothing is more important than diagnosing and treating the problem as quickly as possible — but according to new survey data, about one in four Canadian cancer patients report that they are still experiencing cancelled or postponed appointments.
Canada announced that it had called China's ambassador onto the carpet as Ottawa and Washington expressed their disapproval Friday over a high-altitude balloon found to have been hovering over sensitive sites in the United States.
A group of airlines is asking the Supreme Court of Canada to hear their case after a lower court largely upheld the validity of Canada's air passenger bill of rights.
Medicago Inc., the Quebec-based drug manufacturer of a Canadian COVID-19 vaccine and other plant-based drugs, is being shut down by parent company Mitsubishi Chemical Group.
Pope Francis warned Saturday that South Sudan's future depends on how it treats its women, as he highlighted their horrific plight in a country where sexual violence is rampant, child brides are common and the maternal mortality rate is the highest in the world.
A train derailment and resulting large fire prompted an evacuation order and a declaration of a state of emergency in an Ohio village near the Pennsylvania state line on Friday night, covering the area in billows of smoke lit orange by the flames below.
A landmine killed a 13-year-old boy in the contested Yemeni city of Hodeida, medical and security officials said Friday, the latest in a string of similar incidents in the war-torn country.
The suspected Chinese surveillance balloon that was found floating over sensitive military sites in the western United States had been tracked by Canada's government since last weekend as it passed through Canadian airspace, sources tell CTV News.
Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland is hosting an in-person meeting Friday with the provincial and territorial finance ministers in Toronto to discuss issues including the current economic environment and the transition to a clean economy.
Paid subscriptions to on-demand care are among the many strategies primary health-care providers in Ontario are adopting in order to meet increased demand for access to doctors in the past year, while also managing staffing shortages.
Ontario fully supports the federal government's push to make health-care funding contingent on data reporting, the province said Thursday as it announced a plan to boost access to primary care doctors.
White-tailed deer may be a reservoir for COVID-19 variants of concern including Alpha, Delta and Gamma, according to new research out of Cornell University that raises questions about whether deer could re-introduce nearly extinct variants back into the human population.
Using a device that might be described as a super-duper cocktail shaker, scientists have fashioned a previously unknown form of ice - one that might exist on our solar system's icy moons - in research that sheds light on water's behaviour under extreme conditions.
The oldest preserved vertebrate brain has been found in a 319-million-year-old fossilized fish skull that was removed from an English coal mine over a century ago.
Three bodies found in a vacant Detroit-area apartment building have been identified as those of three aspiring rappers who went missing nearly two weeks ago, police said Friday.
Mexican actor Pablo Lyle was sentenced Friday to five years in prison for involuntary manslaughter after fatally punching a man during a road rage confrontation in Miami in 2019.
A California jury has ruled that Elon Musk is not liable for losses experienced by Tesla shareholders following his controversial "funding secured" tweet from 2018.
A Yukon court has quashed government approval for a mining exploration project, siding with a First Nation that argued there was a failure to properly consult it about the project on its traditional territory.
A Portuguese dog named Bobi has been named the world’s oldest living dog by Guinness World Records, which claims the pooch is also the oldest canine ever recorded.
Canada's newest millionaire, an 18-year-old university freshman from northern Ontario, has achieved a lot of firsts with a recent lottery win. Here is her story.
It took 40 years, but former NHL player and coach Ted Nolan is now one of eight Indigenous ex-NHL-ers being honoured hockey trading cards as a part of Upper Deck's First Peoples Rookie Card series.
The world’s largest international Arctic sporting event is underway in northern Alberta, where athletes compete in unique games significant to the cultural identity of the North.
Unable to get a new contract, Kyrie Irving is looking for a new address. The All-Star guard has asked the Brooklyn Nets for a trade, a person with knowledge of the details said Friday.
Formula One's governing body confirmed the six engine providers for the 2026-30 cycle on Friday which aims to use sustainable fuels and greater electric power.
Ford will return to Formula One as the engine provider for Red Bull Racing in a partnership announced Friday that begins with immediate technical support this season and engines in 2026.
