By: Alvin Fang
Following the Covid 19 pandemic, scientists completed brain scans revealing that teens’ brains have matured faster than in the past.
The kids that survived the pandemic had a higher amount of anxiety knowing that anything bad can have a result or a consequence.
“The pandemic hasn’t been bad just in terms of mental health for adolescents,” says Ian Gotlib, a clinical neuroscientist at Stanford University. “It seems to have altered their brains as well.”
The way the brain matures is still slightly unknown, but many scientists say that our brains go through a process called adolescence which thickens your Hippocampus while your emotional functions start thinning. Through brain scans, it is said that the maturation process moves faster for the people who survived the pandemic than if they didn’t experience it.
“We know there is a relationship between adversity and the brain as it tries to adapt to what it’s been given,” says Beatriz Luna, a developmental cognitive neuroscientist at the University of Pittsburgh, who wasn’t involved in the research. “I think this is a very important study that sets the ball rolling for us to look at this.”
Studies have shown that if a child is exposed to violence or negligence, our brains can grow faster than normal in maturation for children.
“This study shows that the pandemic has had a material impact on brain maturation,” says Joan Luby, a child psychiatrist at Washington University School of Medicine in St Louis. However, “if your brain is prematurely aging, that’s generally not a good thing,” Luby says.