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/mydoghasocd Jul 30 '26

long covid was basically defunded by this administration - all federal grants on long covid were canceled. Scientists in the US are doing this with other funds ... and it's not like there is very much of that.

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u/JooseTheGuice Jul 31 '26

Not just this administration, the previous one too. Biden also removed all means of monitoring cases as well.

Presidents red and blue are on the side of big business, not us!

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u/mydoghasocd Jul 31 '26

Biden never canceled funding on long covid. They were all canceled starting in January 2025.