"Nature" deeply concerned: How has the brain development of children born during the epidemic been affected?

▎WuXi AppTec Content Team Editor In March 2020, the World Health Organization announced that the outbreak caused by the new coronavirus meets the criteria of a "pandemic"
.

Fast forward two years and the first babies born during the pandemic are now more than 650 days old
.

"The first 1,000 days of life are a crucial early foundation for a child's development
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" Many paediatric experts, including UNICEF senior adviser Dr.
Jennifer Requejo, agree
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Therefore, babies born during the epidemic cause their concerns and concerns
.

Image source: 123RF These children, known as the "COVID generation", began to experience unprecedented pressure in the womb.
Almost all strangers they saw after birth wore masks, and the children's songs they heard may often be Coming from the screen, not even knowing that the opportunity to play with friends could have been more.
.
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Could these changes delay neurodevelopment? If so, how big is the impact? How long will it last? Can it be remedied after the epidemic is over? It can take years or even decades to draw conclusions from large-scale analysis
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But over the past two years, the analysis of some small-scale studies has gradually revealed that the generation born during the epidemic has been affected in many ways, even if they are not infected with the virus
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 This month, an in-depth article in the journal Nature explores how the pandemic is shaping children's brains and behavior
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In this post, we look at some existing results
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Prenatal Stress and Decline in Communication Skills Some pediatric experts at New York-Presbyterian Morgan Stanley Children's Hospital have been focusing on infant neurodevelopment since before the pandemic, especially the development of communication and motor skills during the first six months of life
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After the outbreak of the new crown, they first looked to see if the virus infection caused neurodevelopmental delays in newborns
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The good news is that the fetuses exposed to the new coronavirus in the mother's womb don't appear to have the problems they feared after birth
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Soon, however, they discovered unexpected problems
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Image source: 123RF When researchers compared babies born during the pandemic with pre-pandemic data, they found that these "new crown generation" babies generally scored lower on average on tests of gross motor, fine motor and communication skills
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This trend has nothing to do with whether the baby's parents are infected with the new crown, which means that the epidemic environment may be the problem
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According to their results recently published in JAMA Pediatrics, the top journal in the field of pediatrics, the researchers analyzed that the intense stress a mother experiences during pregnancy may be a major factor that negatively affects fetal brain development
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Researchers at the University of Calgary in Canada surveyed more than 8,000 pregnant women during the outbreak
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Nearly half reported symptoms of anxiety and one-third had symptoms of depression — a much higher rate than in the years prior to the coronavirus outbreak
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When they performed magnetic resonance imaging scans of the brains of babies as young as three months after birth, they found that mothers who were more anxious or depressed during pregnancy seemed to affect neural connections in the fetal brain
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▲The researchers looked at the connections between the amygdala (a brain area involved in emotional processing) and other brain regions in the infant brain (Image source: Reference [1]; Credit: Kathryn Manning) There are also studies on the relationship between prenatal stress and child development.
Similar associations were found between
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Italian psychologist Dr.
Livio Provenzi and colleagues observed that babies born to mothers who were more stressed and more anxious during pregnancy had more problems regulating mood and attention at three months of age, such as the inability to maintain social awareness.
Stimulated attention, not so easily soothed
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One piece of perhaps reassuring news is that while pressure in the womb may be detrimental to the baby, some historical research suggests that the effects may not be lasting
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In 2011, the Australian state of Queensland experienced floods, during which some pregnant women were under severe stress
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By six months of age, their children showed deficits in problem-solving and social skills compared to the control group; but by 30 months, the results showed that prenatal stress was no longer associated with this, and the parents had The more acutely responsive children become to their needs, the better children perform
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Lack of interaction and deficits in motor skills Another concern may be after birth: Infants and toddlers don't interact as much with their parents and caregivers as they did before the pandemic
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Especially during quarantine and lockdown, many small families have been forced to reduce their entertainment time and social interaction, and those in care roles may not be able to fully interact with infants and young children one-on-one because of great stress or poor health
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Image credit: 123RF Brown University Associate Professor of Pediatrics Dr.
Sean Deoni and colleagues develop and apply techniques such as magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to study cognitive development in infants, tracking the development of motor, visual, and language skills
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Over the past two years, however, they have gradually noticed that children who come to the institute to test their development take longer than in the past to pass the assessment.

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They used a set of methods similar to IQ tests to measure the neurodevelopment of infants and toddlers
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Compared with babies born in the decade before the pandemic (2011-2019), they found that babies born in those two years experienced significant declines in speech, motor and overall cognitive skills
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Among them, infants from low-income families suffered the largest decline, boys were more affected than girls, and gross motor skills were most affected
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The study has been published on a preprint server and is currently under review in a peer-reviewed journal
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▲Dr.
Deoni and colleagues evaluated more than 600 children aged 3 months to 3 years and found that infants born in 2020 and 2021 scored lower on cognitive development tests (Image source: Reference [1]) According to Dr.
Deoni According to the analysis, these problems mainly stem from the lack of interaction
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In a follow-up study, which has not yet been published, his research team documented parent-child interactions at home, and the amount of parent-child conversations over the past two years was lower than in previous years
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In addition, infants and toddlers don't get as many big motor practice as they used to because they can't play with other kids or go to the playground as often
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Lack of interaction with peers may hinder neurodevelopment in some children, an idea supported by several other studies
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For example, in a paper published in May 2021, researchers in the United Kingdom surveyed 189 local households.
Parents reported whether their children between the ages of 8 months and 3 years old attended daycare or preschool during the epidemic.
At the same time, the study Staff assessed the children's language and executive function skills
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They found that children who were cared for in groups during the pandemic had stronger skills
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The study also found that the advantages of group care are more pronounced for children from low-income families, where it is often more difficult for such families to provide a supportive learning environment at home and for parents to simultaneously care for young children, educate other children and work Allocate time between
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Effects of masks The potential impact of wearing masks on children's development is also of concern to researchers
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Experiments by psychologists have shown that wearing a mask is as easy as wearing sunglasses to mistake people and misunderstand the many emotions conveyed by the face
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In addition, for young children who are learning languages, when the opaque masks cover the movement of the mouth, will it affect their understanding of what adults say, which is also a concern for parents
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Image source: 123RF Psychologist Professor Edward Tronick of the University of Massachusetts Boston conducted a classic experiment in the 1970s: when parents interact face-to-face with their infants, if their faces are suddenly blank, the infants will panic and reduce interaction
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During the pandemic, he and his colleagues conducted a new experiment to see if masks would have a similar effect
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They assessed parent-infant interactions through videos recorded by parents on their mobile phones and found that infants would briefly change their expressions, divert their eyes, or finger masks after noticing that their parents were wearing masks, but did not interrupt their interactions with their parents.
, these behaviors seem to indicate that masks do not completely block children's perception of emotions
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Another study looked at the effect of different masks on speech recognition by 2-year-olds
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The experimental results show that wearing an opaque mask to speak the familiar words of the child does not affect the child's understanding, and the recognition results are the same as when the mask is not worn
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According to study author Dr Leher Singh, a psychologist at the National University of Singapore, children are "more able to compensate for information deficits than we think"
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However, the researchers found that when speaking while wearing a transparent mask, because the transparent medium brought some interference to visual observation, it would affect the child's recognition of spoken language
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How to make the new crown generation grow better? Many researchers believe that it is too early to draw conclusions from these early studies on the impact of the pandemic on the lives of babies born in the past two years
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Several large-scale studies involving multi-national research institutions have been launched, and researchers are learning more about how to make the new crown generation better through data sharing
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Image credit: 123RF Some researchers hold the positive view that many children who lag behind can catch up with no lasting effects
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For example, Professor Moriah Thomason, a child and adolescent psychologist at New York University's Grossman School of Medicine, said some findings that point to negative trends may be more cause for concern, "but I'm sure this generation won't end up hurting by this pandemic
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" Her ongoing research is also assessing how mothers' prenatal stress affects babies, but she stresses: "Children are very adaptable and resilient
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We would love to see as things improve, children are able to do a lot of things.
" Bounce' back
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" Another paediatrician, Dr Dani Dumitriu, also believes that even if children's brains are really affected by the pandemic, it's not too late: "The six-month-old brain is very plastic and we can intervene.
, changing its developmental trajectory
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” These existing studies suggest that it is very meaningful to receive more support during pregnancy, such as from a partner or close friends, to reduce the stress of pregnant women
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The researchers also advocate for some interventions to support families immediately after the child is born
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Parents can play and talk with younger children on a regular basis, giving them the opportunity to play with others in a safe environment
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Policies designed to support families and children will work better for this special generation
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Reference: [1] Melinda Wenner Moyer (2022) The COVID generation: how is the pandemic affecting kids' brains? Nature Doi: https://doi.
org/10.
1038/d41586-022-00027-4 [2] Meet ' Gen C,' the Covid generation.
Retrieved Jan.
13, 2022, from https://edition.
cnn.
com/2021/03/11/us/covid-generation-gen-c/index.
html[3] Lauren C .
Shuffrey et al.
, (2022) Association of birth during the COVID-19 pandemic with neurodevelopmental status at 6 months in infants with and without in utero exposure to maternal SARS-CoV-2 infection.
JAMA Pediatrics Doi:10.
1001/jamapediatrics.
2021.
5563 [4] Deoni, SCL, Beauchemin, J.
, Volpe, A.
, D'Sa, V.
& the RESONANCE Consortium.
(2021) Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Early Child Cognitive Development: Initial Findings in a Longitudinal Observational Study of Child Health.
Preprint at medRxiv https://doi.
org/10.
1101/2021.
08.
10.
21261846 [5] Davies, C.
et al.
(2021) Early childhood education and care (ECEC) during COVID-19 boosts growth in language and executive function.
Infant Child Dev.
Doi: https://doi.
org/10.
1002/ icd.
2241[6] Leher Singh et al.
, (2021) Infants recognize words spoken through opaque masks but not through clear masks.
Dev Sci.
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