{"id":12648,"date":"2024-09-09T19:39:12","date_gmt":"2024-09-09T19:39:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/?p=12648"},"modified":"2024-09-09T20:26:40","modified_gmt":"2024-09-09T20:26:40","slug":"teen-girls-brains-aged-rapidly-during-pandemic-study-finds","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/?p=12648","title":{"rendered":"Teen Girls\u2019 Brains Aged Rapidly During Pandemic, Study Finds"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Neuroimaging found girls experienced cortical thinning far faster than boys did during the first year of Covid lockdowns.<\/p>\n

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A study of adolescent brain development that tested children before and after coronavirus pandemic lockdowns in the United States found that girls\u2019 brains aged far faster than expected, something the researchers attributed to social isolation.<\/p>\n

The study from the University of Washington, published on Monday<\/a> in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, measured cortical thinning, a process that starts in either late childhood or early adolescence, as the brain begins to prune redundant synapses and shrink its outer layer.<\/p>\n

Thinning of the cortex is not necessarily bad; some scientists frame the process as the brain rewiring itself as it matures, increasing its efficiency. But the process is known to accelerate in stressful conditions, and accelerated thinning is correlated with depression<\/a> and anxiety.<\/p>\n

Scans taken in 2021, after shutdowns started to lift, showed that both boys and girls had experienced rapid cortical thinning during that period. But the effect was far more notable in girls, whose thinning had accelerated, on average, by 4.2 years ahead of what was expected; the thinning in boys\u2019 brains had accelerated 1.4 years ahead of what was expected.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cThat is a stunning difference,\u201d said Patricia K. Kuhl, a director of the Institute for Learning and Brain Sciences at the University of Washington and one of the study\u2019s authors. The results, she added, suggested that \u201ca girl who came in at 11, and then returned to the lab at age 14, now has a brain that looks like an 18-year-old\u2019s.\u201d<\/p>\n

Dr. Kuhl attributed the change to \u201csocial deprivation caused by the pandemic,\u201d which she suggested had hit adolescent girls harder because they are more dependent on social interaction \u2014 in particular, talking through problems with friends \u2014 as a way to release stress. <\/p>\n

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Neuroimaging found girls experienced cortical thinning far faster than boys did during the first year of Covid lockdowns.A study of adolescent brain development that tested children before and after coronavirus pandemic lockdowns in the United States found that girls\u2019 brains aged far faster than expected, something the researchers attributed to social isolation.The study from the University of Washington, published on Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, measured cortical thinning, a process that starts in either late childhood or early adolescence, as the brain begins to prune redundant synapses and shrink its outer layer.Thinning of the cortex is not necessarily bad; some scientists frame the process as the brain rewiring itself as it matures, increasing its efficiency. But the process is known to accelerate in stressful conditions, and accelerated thinning is correlated with depression and anxiety.Scans taken in 2021, after shutdowns started to lift, showed that both boys and girls had experienced rapid cortical thinning during that period. But the effect was far more notable in girls, whose thinning had accelerated, on average, by 4.2 years ahead of what was expected; the thinning in boys\u2019 brains had accelerated 1.4 years ahead of what was expected.\u201cThat is a stunning difference,\u201d said Patricia K. Kuhl, a director of the Institute for Learning and Brain Sciences at the University of Washington and one of the study\u2019s authors. The results, she added, suggested that \u201ca girl who came in at 11, and then returned to the lab at age 14, now has a brain that looks like an 18-year-old\u2019s.\u201dDr. Kuhl attributed the change to \u201csocial deprivation caused by the pandemic,\u201d which she suggested had hit adolescent girls harder because they are more dependent on social interaction \u2014 in particular, talking through problems with friends \u2014 as a way to release stress. We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and\u00a0log into\u00a0your Times account, or\u00a0subscribe\u00a0for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?\u00a0Log in.Want all of The Times?\u00a0Subscribe.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":12650,"comment_status":"close","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12648","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lifestyle"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12648","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=12648"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12648\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12651,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12648\/revisions\/12651"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/12650"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12648"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12648"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12648"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}