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. “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. They then used this tool to assess the ages of the MRI brain scans in the two Biobank groups. “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 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.