In a study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers at the University of Washington in Seattle, comparing the Magnetic resonance imaging of adolescentsPre- and post-lockdown brain studies revealed that girls' brains appeared on average 4.2 years larger than expected after lockdowns, compared with 1.4 years larger for boys in the same age groups, raising concerns about the future impact on their learning and development.
“We were surprised by this data, the difference is so dramatic,” Professor Patricia Kuhlco-director of the Institute for Learning and Brain Sciences at the University of Washington in Seattle, according to Agency.
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In 2018, researchers obtained MRI scans of 160 young people between the ages of 9 and 17 and used them to study how the cerebral cortex normally thins during the school years. It should be noted that some cortical thinning is natural and crucial for the maturation and specialization of the brain in adolescence.
After the lockdown, researchers collected MRI scans in 2021 and 2022 from the same participants in the 12-16 age group. Surprisingly, they found that while there was greater cortical thinning in one area of the boys' brain, 30 areas of the girls' brains showed cortical thinning, in both hemispheres and lobes.
Girls vs. boys: How pandemic lockdowns affected their brains
While both boys and girls showed accelerated ageing in a brain region linked to vision, which may affect processing of faces, in women the brain changes occurred in different brain regions. Some affected areas were linked to social cognition, which played a role in processing emotions, while others were linked to interpreting facial expressions and understanding language, which the researchers said were essential for communication.
What could have aged girls' brains more?
Kuhl said girls may be more dependent on social life for their well-being compared to boys. “Girls chat non-stop and share their emotions,” she said. “They are much more dependent on [than boys] in the social scene for their well-being and for their healthy neuronal, physical and emotional development.”
Kuhl noted that premature cortical thinning may be linked to early life adversities and an increased risk of neuropsychiatric disorders.
(Images courtesy of iStock, AP)
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