The pandemic and the lockdowns during it have accelerated the maturation process of the adolescent brain, which during the Covid-19 period "aged" by 4,2 years in girls and 1,4 years in boys.
This is what emerges from research coordinated by the University of Washington in Seattle and published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States (PNAS), which highlights that phenomena of this type are often observed in children who have been chronically subjected to strong stress and sometimes they have negative effects on mental health.
"Adolescence is a period of radical changes in emotional, behavioral, and social development," the researchers explain.
At the same time, numerous changes occur in the structure of the brain. These include thinning of the cerebral cortex, the outer layer of tissue in the brain.
It is this indicator that researchers measured in 160 boys who were included in a study that began in 2018.
Tests conducted on adolescents in 2021 showed excessive thinning of the cerebral cortex compared to reference models.
This, according to the team, may be related to restrictions on social relationships during the first phase of the pandemic.
The phenomenon was much more pronounced in girls, in whom the thinning widely affected the cerebral cortex, while in boys it was limited to the visual cortex.
For researchers, the differences may be related to the different value that social relationships have for the two genders.
"For girls, peer relationships are vital for the development of personal identity; they also rely on these relationships for emotional support more than boys," write researchers seeking to monitor boys' mental health.
edition
t7 live
