Did COVID-19 lockdowns prematurely age teen brains? UW researchers weigh in

SEATTLE, Wash. — In March 2020, the world as we knew it changed forever thanks to COVID-19.

Four years later, we are learning how the pandemic lockdowns may have impacted the teenage brain.

Today, the University of Washington (UW) published its findings in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Researchers say they found “unusually accelerated brain maturation” in adolescents, specifically in girls.

“The pandemic provided a test case for the fragility of teenagers’ brains,” Patricia Kuhl, senior author and co-director of the UW Institute for Learning & Brain Sciences (I-LABS) said in a news release.

“Our research introduces a new set of questions about what it means to speed up the aging process in the brain. All the best research raises profound new questions, and I think that’s what we’ve done here.”

How is brain maturity measured?

According to the University of Washington, brain maturation is measured by looking at the thickness of the outer tissue of the brain, known as the cerebral cortex.

Researchers say it naturally thins with age and sometimes stress and neurological disorders can accelerate this process.

The original research project

UW says the study started as a different project in 2018.

At that time, the goal was to study how the brain structure of 160 teens between the ages of 9 and 17 changed during adolescence.

The cohort was supposed to return in 2020, but the pandemic delayed the repeat tests until 2021, changing the course of the study.

“Once the pandemic was underway, we started to think about which brain measures would allow us to estimate what the pandemic lockdown had done to the brain,” said Neva Corrigan, lead author and research scientist at I-LABS in a news release.

“What did it mean for our teens to be at home rather than in their social groups — not at school, not playing sports, not hanging out?”

Back to the drawing board

UW says its research team chose to pivot the focus of its study.

Using the original 2018 data, they created a model of expected cortical thinning during the teen years.

Next, they re-examined the brains of the adolescents.

UW says about 80% of the original participants returned for the second set of measurements.

The findings

UW says its researchers found that the teens’ brains had a general amount of accelerated thinning, but it was more prominent in the female participants.

“The cortical thinning effects in females were seen all over the brain, in all lobes and both hemispheres. In males, the effects were only seen in the visual cortex,” UW said in a news release.

The research team estimates the average acceleration was 4.2 years in females and 1.4 years in males.

Why the difference?

UW researchers say they have a few theories as to why the female brain was more impacted than the male brain.

Kuhl says it could be due to differences in the importance of social interaction for girls versus boys.

She added that female teenagers often rely more heavily on gathering with friends to talk to each other and share feelings.

Boys, on the other hand, tend to gather for physical activity.

“Teenagers really are walking a tightrope, trying to get their lives together,” Kuhl said.

“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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