The Pandemic Disrupted Adolescent Brain Development

Before COVID, American teenagers’ psychological health was already in decline. The pandemic, with its sudden lockdowns, school closures and other jolts to normal life, made that downward slope steeper. The ensuing mental health crisis has given researchers a rare opportunity to gauge how an extraordinary event such as a public health catastrophe can physically affect the brains of teenagers.

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In one set of research results presented at the conference, Patricia Kuhl of the University of Washington reported a larger-than-normal thinning of the cerebral cortex in a group of 124 adolescents who had been tracked before the pandemic at ages nine to 17 and then again after the COVID lockdown period. “Our findings indicate that the teenage brain showed accelerated aging due to the pandemic lockdown,” she said at the conference.

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