Related video: Endemic vs. Epidemic vs. Pandemic

(NEXSTAR) – A new study comparing the brains of children before and after COVID-19 found that adolescent girls' brains had aged faster than expected during the social isolation and lockdowns brought on by the pandemic.

University of Washington researchers behind the study – published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences – used magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to study the brain structure of 160 subjects ranging in age from 9 to 17.

“We think of the COVID-19 pandemic as a health crisis,” said Patricia Kuhl, senior author and co-director of the UW Institute for Learning & Brain Sciences (I-LABS), in a University of Washington article, “but we know that it produced other profound changes in our lives, especially for teenagers.”

The initial goal of the study when the first scans were performed in 2018 was to examine brain changes during typical adolescence, and a second scan was scheduled for 2020. The COVID-19 pandemic lockdowns made that impossible, however, so researchers were forced to wait another year.

When they finally got the second round of MRI results in 2021, the team noticed a "stunning difference," Patricia K. Kuhl, study co-author and director of the Institute for Learning........

© The Hill