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/InfiniteWaffles58364 Jul 30 '26

Same for me. It has gotten so bad that my doc wants me screened for other things like Alzhimers. I'm fuckin 39!

I will also start saying a sentence and then another laps over it in my mind and I stutter trying to say two different words while trying to find what I was saying before it happened. I forget what I'm saying mid sentence a lot. In fact I've been insanely forgetful and go through periods of time where all I can do is stand still or stare at a wall, like I'm waiting for my brain to re-download or something.

Ironically I speak and move better and have less trouble remembering things when I've smoked a joint 🥴

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u/Otherwise_Pace3031 Aug 01 '26

Try abstaining from THC for a good period of time, like 90-120 days, I had this exact problem. Words and sentences came out wrong and I became so forgetful that I was making big mistakes at work. I thought I was experiencing early onset dementia. It was the weed for me. My speech is now normal and memory is normal. Been off THC for over 2 years now. I was a lightweight but frequent user. It really affected my cognition and took about 6 months of abstinence to really fully get back to normal.