Studying the adolescent brain
Chronic stress, mood disorders, etc. Causes Cerebral cortex becomes abnormally thin, connectivity to frontal lobe and emotional area decreases, brain grows less, becomes vulnerable to internal and external stimuli, and even reduces cognitive ability and attention.
▲ Research results have shown that loneliness, chronic stress, and trauma can have a serious negative impact on the brain of adolescents, causing problems such as decreased cognitive function and social skills when they become adults. Provided by Pixabay The ‘brain’ is a body organ that weighs about 1.4 kg, has about 100 billion nerve cells, and about 100 trillion synapses that connect them, and is called a ‘small universe’. Along with space and the deep sea, the brain remains the last area of exploration in science. In fact, interest in these three areas has continued since ancient times.
Recently, various fields such as mathematics, physics, and chemistry, as well as medicine and biology, are collaborating to solve the secrets of the brain, and the remaining mysteries are being solved one by one.
At the ‘Neuroscience 2023 Conference’ hosted by the American Academy of Neurology held in Washington, D.C. from the 11th to the 15th, new research results related to the brain were released.
According to neuroscience, adolescence is a period of explosive brain development along with social, biological, and emotional changes. In particular, it is known that more than 15% of brain synaptic connections are formed during childhood and adolescence.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported that youth mental health began to show a worsening trend even before the COVID-19 pandemic, and that the pandemic had added new stressors to children and adolescents. Accordingly, scientists used cutting-edge brain imaging technology to analyze how factors such as chronic stress and mood disorders affect adolescent brains.
A research team at the University of Washington in Seattle, USA, used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to analyze the brain structure and function of adolescents before and after the COVID-19 pandemic. As a result, it was confirmed that the cerebral cortex surface of adolescents’ brains became abnormally thinner in both brain hemispheres after the pandemic compared to before. This phenomenon of cortical thinning was more noticeable in female adolescents than in male adolescents.
Professor Patricia Cool (Language Neurology), who led the study, said, “Usually, the thickness of the cerebral cortex gradually becomes thinner with aging, but symptoms of cerebral cortex thinning in young people are often caused by chronic stress or trauma.” She added, “From the results of this study, we can assume that the COVID-19 pandemic has caused significant stress on young people.”
A joint research team from the Computational Neuroscience Laboratory at Harvard University Medical School and the Department of Pediatrics and Adolescents at Boston Children’s Hospital also conducted a similar study using fMRI. As a result of the analysis, it was confirmed that in adolescents’ brains after the pandemic, the connection between the frontal lobe and brain regions that support emotional processing was weakened and morphologically abnormal in many cases. The research team said that this is consistent with the results of a survey that found that adolescents were more stressed and had more negative emotions, including depression, during the pandemic.
Professor Katerina Stamoulis (Adolescent Brain Neurology) said, “Because the brains of adolescents who have not fully grown are vulnerable to internal and external stimuli, stress can have a significant impact on the structure and organization of the brain and ultimately pose a serious threat to mental health. “He pointed out.
Additionally, depression is a common neuropsychiatric disorder in adolescents and is known to occur in a different way than in adults. Accordingly, the research team at the University of California San Diego (USCD) applied artificial intelligence deep learning technology to closely analyze the data of adolescents who participated in the ‘Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) Study’. The ABCD study is a long-term study being conducted by the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) to accurately understand the brain cognitive development process in children and adolescents.
As a result of the analysis, it was found that adolescents with depression had more broken functional connection patterns in the brain than adolescents without depression. It has been confirmed that these brain changes lead to a decline in cognitive ability and attention, and weaken judgment and decision-making functions regarding self and others.
Reporter Yoo Yong-ha
2023-11-15 17:13:48
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