COVID-19 Is Linked to Detectable Brain Changes, Study Shows

(Time) While the world is learning to live with COVID-19, scientists still have many unanswered questions about how the infection affects the body and brain—not just when people are sick, but over the long term as well. In a study presented at the annual meeting of the Radiological Society of North America, researchers report on changes to the brain among people who have recovered from COVID-19. The scientists conducted MRI scans of the brains of 46 people who had had COVID-19 within the past six months, and compared them to the scans of 30 people who had never been infected. They found that most of the people who had recovered from COVID-19 had changes in the circulation of tiny blood vessels in the frontal lobe and brain stem areas, which are involved in higher order cognitive skills such as language expression and voluntary movements. Compared to the control group, this group showed reduced circulation in these microvessels. (Related Study)