Institute for Learning & Brain Sciences, University of Washington, Seattle, WA 98195.
Institute on Human Development and Disability, University of Washington, Seattle, WA 98195.
Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2024 Sep 17;121(38):e2403200121. doi: 10.1073/pnas.2403200121. Epub 2024 Sep 9.
Adolescence is a period of substantial social-emotional development, accompanied by dramatic changes to brain structure and function. Social isolation due to lockdowns that were imposed because of the COVID-19 pandemic had a detrimental impact on adolescent mental health, with the mental health of females more affected than males. We assessed the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic lockdowns on adolescent brain structure with a focus on sex differences. We collected MRI structural data longitudinally from adolescents prior to and after the pandemic lockdowns. The pre-COVID data were used to create a normative model of cortical thickness change with age during typical adolescent development. Cortical thickness values in the post-COVID data were compared to this normative model. The analysis revealed accelerated cortical thinning in the post-COVID brain, which was more widespread throughout the brain and greater in magnitude in females than in males. When measured in terms of equivalent years of development, the mean acceleration was found to be 4.2 y in females and 1.4 y in males. Accelerated brain maturation as a result of chronic stress or adversity during development has been well documented. These findings suggest that the lifestyle disruptions associated with the COVID-19 pandemic lockdowns caused changes in brain biology and had a more severe impact on the female than the male brain.
青春期是一个重要的社会情感发展时期，伴随着大脑结构和功能的巨大变化。由于 COVID-19 大流行而实施的封锁导致社交隔离，对青少年的心理健康产生了不利影响，女性的心理健康比男性受到的影响更大。我们评估了 COVID-19 大流行封锁对青少年大脑结构的影响，并特别关注了性别差异。我们从青少年在大流行封锁之前和之后纵向收集了 MRI 结构数据。COVID 前的数据用于创建皮质厚度随年龄变化的典型青春期发育的正常模型。将 COVID 后的数据中的皮质厚度值与该正常模型进行比较。分析显示，COVID 后大脑的皮质变薄加速，这种情况在大脑中更为广泛，女性比男性更为明显。以发育等效年数衡量，女性的平均加速为 4.2 年，男性为 1.4 年。在发育过程中由于慢性压力或逆境而导致的加速大脑成熟已经得到充分证明。这些发现表明，与 COVID-19 大流行封锁相关的生活方式中断导致了大脑生物学的变化，对女性大脑的影响比男性大脑更为严重。
