Covid-19 lockdowns may have sped up age-related effects on the brain

A recent study reported the somewhat alarming observation that the social disruptions of Covid-19 lockdowns caused significant changes in teenagers’ brains.

Using MRI data, researchers at the University of Washington in Seattle showed that the usual, age-related thinning of the cortex – the folded surface – of the adolescent brain accelerated after the lockdowns and the effect was greater in the female brain than the male.

What are we to make of these findings?

Science shows the critical importance of adolescence for the brain. The notoriously different behaviour of teenagers is due to a large degree to the immaturity of their brain cortex. During adolescence, substantial changes take place to enable the brain to reach maturity. One of these very important changes is the thinning of the cortex.

A breakthrough paper in 2022 delivered the first evidence that, in adolescence, there is a critical period of brain “plasticity” (malleability) in the frontal brain region – the area of the brain responsible for thinking, decision-making, short-term memory and control of social behaviour.

Given the evidence of this sensitivity of brain development in adolescence, is it possible that the pandemic lockdowns really did accelerate harmful brain ageing in teenagers? And how strong is the evidence that it was due to the lockdowns and not something else?

To answer...

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