ArticleScientific reports2023
Effects of COVID-19 pandemic on structural brain development in early adolescence.
Article in Scientific reports, 2023. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 13 papers.
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Who cites it
13 citing papers in PubMed, 17 citations in OpenAlex.
- Individual differences in adolescent cortical development are associated with neighborhood characteristics: Longitudinal findings from the ABCD study.Cerebral cortex (New York, N.Y. : 1991) · 2026Article
- Coupling between neural oscillations and white matter integrity reveals cognitive computational profiles following COVID-19.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- The effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on neurobiological functioning in adolescents.Translational psychiatry · 2025Article
- Youth mental health crisis: A translational view of the COVID-19 pandemic.Neurobiology of stress · 2025Review
- Impact of COVID-19 School Closures on White Matter Plasticity in the Reading Network.Neurobiology of language (Cambridge, Mass.) · 2025Article
- Development of Self-Concept in Childhood and Adolescence: How Neuroscience Can Inform Theory and Vice Versa.Human development · 2024Article
- Development will (try to) find its way: a qualitative study of Chilean adolescent mental health during and after lockdown.Child and adolescent psychiatry and mental health · 2024Article
- COVID-19 related cognitive, structural and functional brain changes among Italian adolescents and young adults: a multimodal longitudinal case-control study.Translational psychiatry · 2024Article
- COVID-19 lockdown effects on adolescent brain structure suggest accelerated maturation that is more pronounced in females than in males.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2024Article
- Genetic and environmental influences on structural brain development from childhood to adolescence: A longitudinal twin study on cortical thickness, surface area, and subcortical volume.Developmental cognitive neuroscience · 2024Article
- Strength and resilience of developing brain circuits predict adolescent emotional and stress responses during the COVID-19 pandemic.Cerebral cortex (New York, N.Y. : 1991) · 2024Article
- Hippocampal Structures Among Japanese Adolescents Before and After the COVID-19 Pandemic.JAMA network open · 2024Article
- Accelerated maturation of brain circuits and executive function in adolescents who experienced the COVID-19 pandemic.Imaging neuroscience (Cambridge, Mass.)Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
4 authors at 1 institution in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
The COVID-19 pandemic caused a global health crisis with large behavioral effects and serious stress and social consequences. Particularly, teenagers suffered pandemic-related social restrictions including school closures. This study examined whether and how structural brain development was influenced by the COVID-19 pandemic and whether pandemic length was associated with accumulating or resilience effects of brain development. We investigated structural changes in social brain regions (medial prefrontal cortex: mPFC; temporoparietal junction: TPJ) as well as the stress-related hippocampus and amygdala, using a longitudinal design of 2 MRI waves. We selected two age-matched subgroups (9-13 years old), one was tested before (n = 114) and the other during (peri-pandemic group, n = 204) the COVID-19 pandemic. Results indicated that teenagers in the peri-pandemic group showed accelerated development in the mPFC and hippocampus compared to the before-pandemic group. Furthermore, TPJ growth showed immediate effects followed by possibly subsequent recovery effects that returned to a typical developmental pattern. No effects were observed for the amygdala. The findings of this region-of-interest study suggest that experiencing the COVID-19 pandemic measures had accelerating effects on hippocampus and mPFC development but the TPJ showed resilience to negative effects. Follow-up MRI assessments are needed to test acceleration and recovery effects over longer periods.
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