Using MRI data,
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 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 the first question, we have to realise that ageing and development are two sides of the same coin. They are inextricably linked. On the one hand, biological ageing is the progressive decline in the function of the body’s cells, tissues and systems. On the other, development is the process by which we reach maturity.
Adverse conditions at critical periods of our life, especially adolescence, are very likely to influence our ageing trajectory. It is therefore plausible that the “accelerated maturation” of the teenage brain cortex is an age-related change that will affect the rate of brain ageing throughout life.
So it seems there is an unpalatable and much more serious conclusion: the reported accelerated maturation – though serious enough – is not a one-off detriment. It may well set a trajectory of adverse brain ageing way beyond adolescence.
Now to the second question: the role, if any, of the lockdowns...
Professor James Goodwin, an expert in the physiology of ageing, discusses a study that found COVID lockdowns affected adolescents’ brain structures in a new Conversation article.