A new study says the stress of the COVID pandemic appears to have physically changed teenagers' brains, aging them faster than normal. Let's go to our chief medical correspondent, Dr. Sanjay Gupta, who joins us.
Is this like staring at screens and phones? Why did this happen? Well, I got to tell you, first of all, I have three teenage girls at home, so we saw this personally, and now we're starting to understand, get a better idea of what exactly was happening to teenagers and get a good idea of what was happening to their brain.
Specifically. A lot of it is what you say it was the uncertainty of what was happening during the pandemic. But a lot of it also was the sort of reduced social structure of being around friends and the social development that simply happens by being around friends and other people.
During your teenage years, in particular, we know there's been lots of what are called internalizing symptoms that develop. People had increased rates of anxiety and depression. What was so fascinating, even before the pandemic, there was a study going on where they were looking at adolescent brains, doing these MRI scans every couple of years, trying to understand how brains change, specifically during that period.
And so they had these studies already underway. Pandemic happens. They continue to study. So now they can look at brains before the pandemic and then during the pandemic. And what they found was pretty staggering.
Let me show you here on this brain model if I can. They show that the brains aged much more quickly. What does that mean? This area of the brain over here, which is called the cortex, thinks of that like the bark on a tree.
The outer layer got thinner and thinner. That happens with age. It happened much more quickly during the pandemic for these adolescent brains. That's the area of the brain that's responsible for executive thinking.
For example, at the same time, you look deep into the brain areas over here, which are responsible for your ability to regulate emotions, for example. They aged more quickly as well. So all these things are sort of happening simultaneously.
And it was something that they could study in these children because, again, they had these scans before the pandemic and then again at least a year into the pandemic. So teenagers we know, Sanjay, like to rebel.
And so they spent a lot of time with their parents, which I think was constricting for them. And usually how they sort of gain independence through their friends and the camaraderie that they have right.
These relationships. But my question is, look, I don't think you can reverse it. You would know better than me, but can it be normalized now? How long does it take at least to go back to normal, if you understand what I'm saying?
Yeah, so don. It's interesting because there are some things in life and within medicine that just are without precedent. We don't have a lot to base this on in terms of what is likely to happen in the future.
What we can say is this, is that the types of changes that were seen in the brains during that period within a year, so a short period at the end of 2020, they saw these changes. They typically take years and years to develop those types of changes.
And they're typically associated with what is known as adverse childhood experiences, meaning witnessing violence, witnessing things that are traumatic as a child. Those are the types of things that typically lead to these sorts of changes.
We saw them much more quickly within a year. It may be hard to read that screen there, but basically, you saw more of what are known as internalizing symptoms of anxiety, isolation, and depression. You didn't see an increase in what are known as externalizing symptoms.
Those are rule-breaking, aggressive violence, and things like that. So that was something your question, how long does it last? We don't know. I mean, could there be a reversal of some of those changes, perhaps?
And is the Hope study going to continue for that very reason? I guess also the. Follow what Donna is saying. Can you undo it? Now that kids are, most of them returning to school, their background, and their friends, they're not having the same kind of restrictions as at the height of the pandemic.
Does that can it help if it developed as quickly as it did? Can it help now that they're back to normal and easing that faster? Her that is absolutely the hope. Caitlyn but I want to be careful here because we are seeing something that is without precedent.
So to try and extrapolate what this might look like in a couple of years, we didn't have MRI scanning during the last pandemic. What we do know, and I guess this is a little bit optimistic in a good way, is that after the 1918-1919 pandemic, there was this earnest return to normalcy.
There were the roaring twenties that came back after the 1918 flu pandemic. Might that happen here as well? Might we see that reflected in the brains of these adolescents? That is certainly the hope, yeah.
Dr, thank you very much. Have a great weekend. Good to see you, as always.