Pandemic Stress Prematurely Aged Teens’ Brains, Stanford Study Finds

The stress from the pandemic prematurely aged adolescents’ brains, according to a new Stanford University study that adds to the growing list of the lockdown’s troubling impacts on teens.

Using MRI scans, the study found that changes in brain structure that occur naturally with age sped up in adolescents as they experienced the COVID-19 lockdowns. Their brains ended up looking like those of their peers about three years older. And that could have lasting implications for those youths if the changes are found to be more than temporary, researchers say.

“We know developmentally that brains change over time. That’s not at all a surprise,” said Stanford Professor of Psychology Ian Gotlib, lead author of the study published Thursday in the journal Biological Psychiatry: Global Open Science. “What was surprising here was how quickly these changes occurred in adolescents as a result of the pandemic.”

What those changes mean as far as the teens’ brain function and mental health, and whether the changes will be temporary or permanent, is unclear, Gotlib said.

But the study said research done before the pandemic already had found a link between exposure to early life adversity — violence, neglect and family dysfunction — and not only poorer mental health but also accelerated brain aging. The research only looked at changes in adolescents.

The new study adds to a stack of evidence that children suffered mentally, emotionally and academically from pandemic school closures and the resulting isolation and family stress. A Stanford-based independent research group in 2021 found evidence that younger children’s ability to read aloud suffered, and newly released standardized test scores showed demonstrable decline in California and across the country.

The findings about pandemic brain changes in teens stemmed from an ongoing long-term study begun about eight years ago to explore why adolescent girls have higher rates of depression than boys. The researchers were following a group of about 200 Bay Area adolescents and assessing them for changes, including MRI scans every two years.

Excperted from “Pandemic stress prematurely aged teens’ brains, Stanford study finds” in the San Jose Mercury News. Read the full article online. 

Source: San Jose Mercury News | Pandemic stress prematurely aged teens’ brains, Stanford study finds, https://www.mercurynews.com/2022/12/01/pandemic-stress-prematurely-aged-teens-brains-stanford-study-finds | Copyright © 2022 MediaNews Group

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