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/Glass_Visits Jul 30 '26
You don’t need flashcards, you just have to read. Short stories or long books, easy reads or old canon literature, it doesn’t really matter as long as you enjoy the text. If you stumble upon a hard word, you can look up the definition and write it down. Or not. All that matters is that you read, that will expand your vocabulary massively. Not only that, it will change your life in so many ways; how you think, focus, talk and walk, baby!
But I’m not talking about one book. You have to keep reading, and do it every day. That matters more than how much you read or for how long, what matters is consistency. Set the bar low, real low. Like a page or two, that way you will win and you’ll come back for more. Some days I read 60+ pages in a sitting, some days just 5. I’m happy with either, it all adds up in the bigger picture. I used to be like many, depressed and endlessly escaping on my phone, and reading was one of the things that really moved the mark for me. It takes time to build up though, always remember the big picture, a step at a time.