COVID-19 Made Our Brains Age Faster
To investigate COVID-19's impact on the brain, researchers looked at brain scans from 1,000 people during and before the pandemic. They compared these to brain scans from other people taken during "normal" times as a model for typical brain aging.
Led by Ali-Reza Mohammadi-Nejad from the University of Nottingham School of Medicine in the U.K., the researchers looked at measures like brain function, gray and white matter volume, a person's cognitive skills, and their chronological age. Gray matter is critical for memory, emotions, and movement, while white matter is essential for helping nerves transmit electrical signals.
The pandemic-era brains aged about 5.5 months faster compared to the brains of those studied before the pandemic. The accelerated aging was documented in people who had COVID-19 infections as well as those who didn't, which strongly suggests that pandemic-related factors other than biological or virus-driven ones—like high stress—were also at work. In fact, the changes in gray and white matter were similar in people who were and were not infected.
'This finding was interesting and rather unexpected,' says Mohammadi-Nejad. Other studies have already shown that the COVID-19 virus can change the brain for the worse, but "we found that participants who simply lived through the pandemic period, regardless of infection, also showed signs of slightly accelerated brain aging. This highlights that the broader experience of the pandemic—including disruptions to daily life, stress, reduced social interactions, reduced activity, etc.,—may have had a measurable impact on brain health.'
Read More: What to Know About the New COVID-19 Variant XFG
The impact of the pandemic seemed to be greater in certain groups—notably men, the elderly, and people with more compromised health, lower educational status and income, or unstable housing. People with less stable employment had an average of five months of additional brain aging compared to those with higher employment status, while poorer health added about four months of increased brain age compared to better health.
However, only people infected with COVID-19 showed drops in cognitive skills.
But the fact that those who weren't infected during the pandemic also showed accelerated aging reflects the need to acknowledge the broader health effects of the pandemic beyond the obvious physical metrics on which doctors tend to focus. 'Brain health can be influenced by everyday life activities, and major societal disruptions—like those experienced during the pandemic—can leave a mark even in healthy individuals,' Mohammadi-Nejad says. 'This adds to our understanding of public health by reinforcing the importance of considering mental, cognitive, and social well-being alongside traditional physical health indicators during future crisis-response planning.'
While the study did not explore specific ways to address brain aging, he says that strategies known to maintain brain health, such as a healthy diet, exercise, adequate sleep, and social and cognitive interactions are important, especially in the context of stressful circumstances such as a pandemic. 'Whether these can reverse the specific changes we observed remains to be studied,' he says.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
American Press
11 minutes ago
- American Press
Louisiana 'ahead of the game' on Medicaid overhaul, but funding challenges loom
Rep. Stephanie Berault, R-Slidell, who sits on the House Health and Welfare Committee, says the state is well prepared to manage upcoming changes with Medicaid — although concerns remain about the burden of new work requirements and a looming loss of federal dollars. 'I don't think it's going to be as bad as all the panic seems to be,' Berault told The Center Square in an interview. 'We're going to have to make some adjustments and plan over time. I think it's going to force us to speed up some technological improvements that we were going to make anyway.' Roughly 400,000 people have lost Medicaid coverage in Louisiana since July 2023, when the state resumed eligibility checks that had been paused during the COVID-19 public health emergency. That reduced Medicaid enrollment to about 1.6 million as of June — a 21% drop from the 2023 peak of 2 million, according to a report from the Louisiana Public Affairs Research Council, citing data from the Kaiser Family Foundation. Much of the concern, Berault said, stems from fears that people could lose coverage due to administrative hurdles rather than ineligibility. 'It seems to me that a lot of the panic is around the fear that people will lose coverage because of paperwork issues, not necessarily because they lost eligibility,' Berault said. 'We have the technology that we can implement… we're just going to have to find a way to do it more quickly.' Under recently passed federal legislation dubbed the 'One Big Beautiful Bill,' Medicaid eligibility rules will tighten further. Most adult recipients will be required to work or participate in certain activities at least 80 hours per month by the end of 2026. The law also mandates income verification every six months — a compliance challenge for lower-income residents, Berault noted. 'A lot of times, people who are already having low-income challenges, resource challenges — it's compliance with having to deal with checking in and work requirements that is more difficult,' she said. Berault expects that her 'One Door' law will aid the state transition away from federal dependency. The law aims to streamline benefit access through a centralized system that connects the Louisiana Department of Health and Louisiana Workforce Commission. 'That has put us a little bit ahead of the game… the collaboration between workforce and LDH is already happening here,' Berault said. 'There will be a dashboard… they will have a case manager through Louisiana Works who is going to be helping them manage all of their benefits.' Under Berault's law, Louisiana Department of Health will handle SNAP and Medicaid eligibility, 'but it's all going to be going through a centralized from the perspective of Louisiana residents needing services,' Berault said. The federal Medicaid overhaul is also expected to impact the state's budget in coming years, as Louisiana will be required to shoulder a greater share of costs currently covered through provider taxes — a financing mechanism that draws down additional federal matching dollars. 'That is a concern that we're going to have to address during the budgeting process,' Berault said. 'As the provider tax piece drops down, the state will be required to put up more… so we're going to have to figure out where that money comes from.' Of Louisiana's $21.2 billion Medicaid budget, about $16 billion — or 75% — is currently funded by the federal government. That reliance is partly due to Louisiana's high poverty rate and its decision to expand Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act. As of 2025, about 32.8% of Louisiana residents are enrolled in the program, one of the highest rates in the country, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation. Despite the disenrollment trend, Louisiana's Medicaid budget continues to grow — driven by medical inflation and rate increases for providers — even as fewer people are covered. Still, Berault remains optimistic that Louisiana's proactive efforts to modernize its eligibility systems and coordinate agencies will help soften the blow of upcoming federal mandates. 'My hope is, and my expectation is, that fewer people will be missed than maybe the expectation is going to be — that there's going to be a lot of people that lose their Medicaid just because they didn't click the box, they didn't get in and verify their income,' she said. 'But if workforce is already communicating with LDH, then hopefully there'll be a lot less of that.'
Buzz Feed
11 minutes ago
- Buzz Feed
Apparently Covid Aged All Our Brains, Even If You Didn't Catch It
Those with long Covid, a condition which sees symptoms persist months or even years after catching the Covid-19 virus, have long reported 'brain fog'. Though scientists aren't sure why the link seems to exist, some suspect that Covid can persist in the gut long after the acute infection has gone – creating microbiome changes associated with brain issues. But new research published in Nature Communications last week (22 July) has suggested the pandemic may have aged all of our brains, whether we caught the virus or not. In fact, it appeared to have aged our brains by nearly six months. How much did the pandemic age our brains? The researchers looked at the brain scans of almost 1,000 healthy people from the UK Biobank study. They checked them before the pandemic, and some had scans after, too. Using data from over 15,000 brain scans, along with machine learning and imaging, the scientists predicted the brain age of the participants involved in the study. After comparing like-for-like scans (participants were matched for gender, age, and health status), the researchers found that, on average, our brains' ageing appeared to have been accelerated by 5.5 months after the pandemic. This was the case whether or not participants had actually caught Covid themselves. 'What surprised me most was that even people who hadn't had Covid showed significant increases in brain ageing rates,' the study's lead author Dr Ali-Reza Mohammadi-Nejad said. 'It really shows how much the experience of the pandemic itself, everything from isolation to uncertainty, may have affected our brain health.' Why did the pandemic appear to make our brains age faster? This study didn't seek to find that out, but its results suggest that brain ageing may have hit men and socioeconomically-disadvantaged people harder. The researchers speculated that a lack of socialising and exercise for some in the pandemic may have led to the change, as could increased consumption of alcohol. 'This study reminds us that brain health is shaped not only by illness, but by our everyday environment,' Dr Dorothee Auer, Professor of Neuroimaging and senior author on the study, said. 'The pandemic put a strain on people's lives, especially those already facing disadvantage. We can't yet test whether the changes we saw will reverse, but it's certainly possible, and that's an encouraging thought.'
WIRED
12 minutes ago
- WIRED
The Pandemic Appears to Have Accelerated Brain Aging, Even in People Who Never Got Covid
Jul 29, 2025 12:52 PM Stress, isolation, and uncertainty appear to have caused the brain to age quicker for those who lived through the crisis. Photographer: LisaMore than five years after the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, we are still discovering the after-effects of not only the virus but also the prolonged period of stress, isolation, loss, and uncertainty that the pandemic caused. A new scientific study, published this month in Nature Communications, has revealed that the pandemic may have accelerated brain aging in people even if they were never infected with the coronavirus. Researchers at the University of Nottingham in the UK analyzed brain images captured before and after the onset of the health crisis. The scientists found that the brains of those who lived through the pandemic appeared to age faster over its duration compared to those whose brains were only scanned prior to March 2020. 'What surprised me most was that even people who hadn't had Covid showed significant increases in brain aging rates,' said Ali-Reza Mohammadi-Nejad, a coauthor of the study, in a statement on the university's website. 'It really shows how much the experience of the pandemic itself, everything from isolation to uncertainty, may have affected our brain health.' The team used longitudinal data from the UK Biobank, a huge dataset that is periodically collecting biological information from roughly half a million people over a long period of time and which includes MRI scans of nearly 1,000 adults. Of these people, some had received two scans before the pandemic (the control group), while others had one before and one after confinement and health restrictions had been implemented in response to the viral outbreak (the 'pandemic' group). 'The longitudinal MRI data acquired before and after the pandemic from the UK Biobank gave us a rare window to observe how such a major life event can affect the brain,' said Stamatios Sotiropoulos, professor of computational neuroimaging at the University of Nottingham and a coauthor of the study, in a statement. To estimate each person's 'brain age,' the researchers trained a machine-learning model on more than 15,000 healthy volunteers without chronic diseases to allow them to determine how much older or younger a brain looked relative to its chronological age. They then used this tool to assess the ages of the MRI brain scans in the two Biobank groups. When looking at the second scans in each group, the mean difference between chronological and measured age was 5.5 months higher in the pandemic group compared to the control group. The researchers also found that this acceleration of brain aging was more marked in older people, men, and those from disadvantaged socioeconomic backgrounds, such as those with low educational levels, precarious jobs, or housing and health difficulties. 'This study reminds us that brain health is shaped not only by illness but by our everyday environment,' said Dorothee Auer, lead author of the study, in in a statement released by the University of Nottingham. 'The pandemic put a strain on people's lives, especially those already facing disadvantage.' Although brain aging was seen universally among those living through the pandemic, only those infected went on to show measurable cognitive impairment, a symptom of Covid that has been documented in the past. The study found that those in the pandemic group who had Covid between the two scans experienced a drop in performance in mental flexibility and processing speed tests. In contrast, those who were not infected showed no significant cognitive changes, suggesting that structural aging does not always translate into visible functional symptoms. However, the authors acknowledge that there are some important limitations to this observational study, which could bias the results. These include the interval of time between people's scans differing between the two groups, as well as the UK Biobank lacking representation from the most marginalized sectors of the British population. The researchers also highlighted the possibility of reversibility, as only brain scans from two time points were analyzed, meaning that there may be neurological recovery in these people in subsequent years. 'We don't yet know if the observed changes can be reversed, but it is an encouraging idea,' Auer said. This story originally appeared on WIRED en Español and has been translated from Spanish.
