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A study from the University of Nottingham found that even people who never caught SARS-CoV-2 showed signs of faster brain aging during the pandemic.
Researchers said that pandemic-induced stress, isolation and social disruption may have influenced how fast our brains age more than the virus itself.
The paper was published in Nature Communications.
Linking stress and brain aging during the pandemic
The COVID-19 pandemic brought widespread disruption – including chronic stress, isolation and economic hardship. These conditions affect mental health and there’s growing concern they may also speed up brain aging.
Research has shown that SARS-CoV-2 can affect the brain directly. Infected individuals have experienced memory problems, reduced attention and measurable structural changes. However, the wider impact of the pandemic on people who were never infected hasn’t been studied as closely.
The new research set out to look at how age, sex, infection status and inequality might interact with brain aging during the pandemic.
Measuring changes in brain aging with MRI scans
The team used brain scans and health data from the UK Biobank, a large dataset of middle-aged and older adults. They focused on 996 people with two MRI scans: One group scanned entirely before the pandemic (564 people), and another scanned before and after it began (432 people). The second group included people who had COVID-19 and those who didn’t.
To track changes in brain aging, the team used a model trained on over 15,000 healthy pre-pandemic scans. This model estimated each person’s “brain age” and compared it to their real age to calculate a brain age gap. They then measured how that gap changed between scans.
People who lived through the pandemic showed faster brain aging than the control group scans – ~five and a half months more over three years. This effect appeared even in those who never had COVID-19, pointing to stress and lifestyle disruption as likely causes.
The changes in brain age were seen across grey and white matter, rather than being isolated to specific brain regions.
Certain groups were more affected. Older adults, men and people from more deprived backgrounds showed larger changes. Only those who had COVID-19 showed drops in cognitive performance, especially in tasks measuring flexibility and speed. These declines were linked to greater brain age acceleration.
“What surprised me most was that even people who hadn’t had COVID-19 showed significant increases in brain aging rates,” said lead author Dr. Ali-Reza Mohammadi-Nejad, a research fellow in the Faculty of Medicine & Health Sciences at the University of Nottingham. “It really shows how much the experience of the pandemic itself, everything from isolation to uncertainty, may have affected our brain health.”
What pandemic brain aging means for health and inequality
The study suggests the pandemic affected brain health in ways that go beyond infection. Mohammadi-Nejad and the team suggest this supports a “bio-psycho-social” model, where biology, mental wellbeing and social context all shape how the brain ages.
“The pandemic put a strain on people’s lives, especially those already facing disadvantage,” said senior author Dr. Dorothee Auer, a professor of neuroimaging in the Faculty of Medicine & Health Sciences at the University of Nottingham.
“We can’t yet test whether the changes we saw will reverse, but it’s certainly possible, and that’s an encouraging thought,” she added.
There’s no sign that this accelerated aging leads to illness and it may not cause symptoms at all. However, this does raise concerns over future health, especially for older adults and those with fewer resources.
“The longitudinal MRI data acquired before and after the pandemic from the UK Biobank gave us a rare window to observe how major life events can affect the brain,” said co-lead author Dr. Stamatios Sotiropoulos, a professor of Computational Neuroimaging in the Faculty of Medicine & Health Sciences at the University of Nottingham.
The team argues longer follow-up is needed to see if the brain recovers, and to understand which areas are most affected.
“This study reminds us that brain health is shaped not only by illness, but by our everyday environment,” said Auer.
Reference: Mohammadi-Nejad AR, Craig M, Cox EF, et al. Accelerated brain ageing during the COVID19 pandemic. Nat Comm. 2025. doi: 10.1038/s41467-025-61033-4
This article is a rework of a press release issued by the University of Nottingham. Material has been edited for length and content.
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