The Washington Post (12/1, Reynolds Lewis) reports, “The stress of pandemic lockdowns prematurely aged the brains of teenagers by at least three years and in ways similar to changes observed in children who have faced chronic stress and adversity,” according to a study published in Biological Psychiatry: Global Open Science. Researchers compared “MRI scans of a group of 128 children, half taken before and half at the end of the first year of the pandemic” and “found growth in the hippocampus and amygdala, brain areas that respectively control access to some memories and help regulate fear, stress and other emotions.” Researchers “also found thinning of the tissues in the cortex, which is involved in executive functioning.”
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