Impact of Lockdown on the Brain Aging of the Young

Even by the non-ideal standards of the pre-2020 world, I would have said it was inconceivable that the circumstances would ever arise where a study could be done on the brains of adolescents to measure the impact prolonged social isolation would have on their brains.  And yet in 2024 the PNAS has this study which examined the accelerated brain aging the COVID-19 lockdown measures had on the brains of boys and girls.  The Guardian covers the study here.

Using MRI structural data, the study examined the differences in male and female adolescent brain developing during the lockdown.  The study estimates that the brain maturation of girls was accelerated (on average) by 4.2 years, compared to 1.4 years for boys.  So these mitigation measures had a greater impact on the brain development of females.  This study does not get into the details of what that toll amounts to in terms of mental health, etc.  

Here is the abstract:

Adolescence is a period of substantial social–emotional development, accompanied by dramatic changes to brain structure and function. Social isolation due to lockdowns that were imposed because of the COVID-19 pandemic had a detrimental impact on adolescent mental health, with the mental health of females more affected than males. We assessed the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic lockdowns on adolescent brain structure with a focus on sex differences. We collected MRI structural data longitudinally from adolescents prior to and after the pandemic lockdowns. The pre-COVID data were used to create a normative model of cortical thickness change with age during typical adolescent development. Cortical thickness values in the post-COVID data were compared to this normative model. The analysis revealed accelerated cortical thinning in the post-COVID brain, which was more widespread throughout the brain and greater in magnitude in females than in males. When measured in terms of equivalent years of development, the mean acceleration was found to be 4.2 y in females and 1.4 y in males. Accelerated brain maturation as a result of chronic stress or adversity during development has been well documented. These findings suggest that the lifestyle disruptions associated with the COVID-19 pandemic lockdowns caused changes in brain biology and had a more severe impact on the female than the male brain.

Tragically few public health officials were vocal about invoking a precautionary approach to the deleterious effects of the lockdown measures, in terms of the harmful impact on the physical and mental health of children.  Such reasoning was selectively applied only to the potential deleterious effects of getting infected with the virus.        

Cheers, 

Colin