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Your Message Study shows how the pandemic may have affected teens’ brains
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The pandemic’s effects on teenagers were profound — numerous studies have documented reports of issues with their mental health, social lives and more.

Now, a new study suggests those phenomena caused some adolescents’ brains to age much faster than they normally would — 4.2 years faster in girls and 1.4 years faster in boys on average, according to the study published Monday in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

By being the first to contribute details on aging differences by sex, the study adds to the existing body of knowledge provided by two previous studies on the Covid-19 pandemic and accelerated brain aging among adolescents.
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“The findings are an important wake-up call about the fragility of the teenage brain,” said senior study author Dr. Patricia K. Kuhl, the Bezos Family Foundation Endowed Chair in Early Childhood Learning and codirector of the Institute for Learning and Brain Sciences at the University of Washington in Seattle, via email. “Teens need our support now more than ever.”

Significant socioemotional development occurs during adolescence, along with substantial changes to brain structure and function. The thickness of the cerebral cortex naturally peaks during childhood, steadily decreases throughout adolescence and continues to decrease through one’s lifespan, the authors wrote.

The researchers originally intended to track ordinary adolescent brain development over time, starting with MRIs the authors conducted on participants’ brains in 2018. They planned to follow up with them for another scan in 2020.

The pandemic delayed the second MRI by three to four years — when the 130 participants based in Washington state were between ages 12 and 20. The authors excluded adolescents who had been diagnosed with a developmental or psychiatric disorder or who were taking psychotropic medications.