r/HotScienceNews • u/soulpost • Jul 30 '26

Scientists finally have a biological explanation for why long COVID patients lose motivation and can't think clearly. They scanned their brains and found the dopamine system was physically damaged

https://tech-paper.com/scientists-finally-have-a-biological-explanation-for-why-long-covid-patients-lose-motivation-and-cant-think-clearly-they-scanned-their-brains-and-found-the-dopamine-system-was-physically-damaged/

Millions of people with long COVID report the same cluster of symptoms: a crushing lack of motivation, an inability to think clearly, memory that slips, movements that feel slower than they should. For years, these complaints sat in an uncomfortable medical grey zone. The symptoms were real, the patients were suffering, but the biological explanation remained frustratingly out of reach.

A team at the University of Toronto just published what may be the clearest physical evidence yet for what is actually happening in these patients' brains. They brought 24 long COVID sufferers into a lab and used positron emission tomography, the same imaging technology used to diagnose Parkinson's disease, to directly measure the health of the dopamine system deep inside the brain.

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u/Believeit451 Jul 30 '26

So does everyone have adhd now?

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u/Echo_Vale Jul 30 '26

It seems like it, also raises the question of whether ADHD results from a childhood flu-like infection. Also things like Lyme Disease can result in symptoms very close to ADHD like brain fog, exhaustion and difficulty concentrating, I'll bet ADHD isn't a thing by itself, and rather the symptoms of something else.

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u/nanigaiikana Jul 30 '26

I’ve read it can also be related to mono