Tamara Thomas

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Restrictive lockdown measures enacted during the COVID-19 pandemic may have accelerated brain aging in females faster than imagined, even faster than their male peers, according to a study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Previous studies have found that the restrictive measures during the lockdown had a substantial negative impact on the mental health of teenagers, with females more adversely affected than males.
For this study, Dr. Neva Corrigan from the Institute for Learning &amp; Brain Sciences, University of Washington, Seattle, and colleagues evaluated the impact of the pandemic lockdown on adolescent brain development and how this differed with gender.
The researchers obtained MRI  (magnetic resonance imaging) data from adolescents at two different time points. The first was in 2018, before the pandemic lockdown, and the second was three years later (from August 2021 to early 2022).
At the first time point, researchers gathered MRI data from 160 participants. Of these, there were 30 nine-year-olds, 33-eleven-year-olds, 34 thirteen-year-olds, 31 fifteen-year-olds, and 32 seventeen-year-olds.
At the second time point, researchers collected MRI data from 130 subjects. The participants were divided into five age groups: 26 were 12-year-olds, 25 were 14-year-olds, 31 were 16-year-olds, 23 were 18-year-olds, and 25 were 20-year-olds.
The study revealed that after pandemic restrictions began to ease, brain scans conducted in 2021 showed a significant acceleration of cortical thinning in both boys and girls. Cortical thinning is a natural part of aging, with greater loss typically in the frontal and temporal subregions—areas responsible for cognitive functions like decision-making and memory. Notably, both regions link to social cognition. 
However, this thinning was considerably more pronounced in teen girls than boys, with a 4.2-year faster acceleration than the expected rate for their age. Meanwhile, the thinning in boys’ brains had accelerated only 1.4 years ahead of what was expected.
According to one of the study authors, Dr. Patricia Kuhl, the more significant impact on female brains could be due to differences in how much more meaningful social interactions are for girls than boys. She noted that teenage girls relied more heavily on emotional relationships than other girls, while boys tend to gather solely for physical activity.
“Teenagers really are walking a tightrope, trying to get their lives together,” Dr. Kuhl explained in a university news release. “They’re under tremendous pressure. Then a global pandemic strikes and their normal channels of stress release are gone. Those release outlets aren’t there anymore, but the social criticisms and pressures remain because of social media. What the pandemic really seems to have done is to isolate girls. All teenagers got isolated, but girls suffered more. It affected their brains much more dramatically.”
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Source: <a href="https://www.healthday.com/health-news/mental-health/pandemic-isolation-may-have-caused-rapid-brain-aging-in-teen-girls">HealthDay</a>
Journal Source:  <a href="https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.2403200121#sec-3">Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences</a>

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