Covid shutdowns had same effect on people's memories as serving jail time, ... trends now

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Lockdowns during the pandemic may have had a similar impact on people’s memories to serving jail time, a study suggests.

Researchers in the UK asked 227 people to name the year in which important news events happened such as Meghan Markle joining the British royal family or the first Covid vaccines being rolled out.

But they found that the volunteers remembered events from 2021 about as poorly as those from four years earlier.

The scientists said this was similar to what happens to people in prison, who lose the ability to track time because of the absence of 'reference events' like birthday parties and vacations.

Dr Arash Sahraie, a psychologist at the University of Aberdeen who was a senior author on the study, said: ‘In prison, research shows that people report days dragging and years flying by, with inmates losing track of time.

‘This is similar to what we saw in people asked to recall events during lockdowns, probably because, like

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