New research shows that people scanned after the COVID-19 pandemic began had older-looking brains than those scanned before, even without infection, especially among older adults, men, and disadvantaged groups.
- People scanned after the pandemic showed signs of faster brain aging, even without COVID infection
- Effects were most notable in older adults, men, and those from disadvantaged backgrounds
- Brain aging did not always result in symptoms—and may still be reversible
New research suggests that living through the COVID-19 pandemic may have accelerated brain aging—even in people who were never infected with the virus (1✔ ✔Trusted Source
Accelerated brain ageing during the COVID-19 pandemic
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The study, led by scientists at the University of Nottingham and published in Nature Communications, examined brain scans from nearly 1,000 healthy adults as part of the UK Biobank project. Using advanced imaging and machine learning, the researchers compared scans taken before and after the pandemic to estimate changes in “brain age”—how old the brain appears based on its structural features.
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Never Had COVID? Your Brain Might Still Have Aged
Participants who had not contracted COVID-19 still showed signs of accelerated brain aging when scanned post-pandemic. These changes were especially pronounced in men, older adults, and individuals from socioeconomically disadvantaged backgrounds.
Lead author Dr. Ali-Reza Mohammadi-Nejad noted, “What surprised me most was that even people who hadn’t had COVID showed significant increases in brain ageing rates. It really shows how much the experience of the pandemic itself, everything from isolation to uncertainty, may have affected our brain health.”
Importantly, these structural changes did not necessarily produce immediate cognitive symptoms, though infected individuals did show some declines in mental flexibility and processing speed.
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Can Brain Scans Reveal Hidden Stress Damage?
The team used longitudinal MRI data from the UK Biobank, analyzing people who had scans before and after the pandemic. A separate machine learning model, trained on scans from 15,000 healthy individuals, helped the researchers determine how much older a person’s brain appeared compared to their actual age.
The researchers found that participants scanned after the onset of the pandemic consistently showed greater signs of brain aging than those scanned only before it. Notably, those with confirmed COVID-19 infection between scans also had measurable cognitive changes.
Why Some Brains Aged Faster: The Role of Inequality
The most significant changes in brain age were observed among people from more socioeconomically deprived backgrounds. According to senior author Prof. Dorothee Auer, “The pandemic put a strain on people’s lives, especially those already facing disadvantage.”
These findings suggest that chronic stress, isolation, and social inequity, rather than just the virus itself—may have had measurable impacts on brain health.
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