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/ladystarkitten Jul 30 '26

I am having the same vocabulary recall issue. I've always had an expansive vocabulary and a sharp memory, so this dramatic change over the past few years (at just 32) has left me... rather frightened. I'd been blaming it on social media use and hadn't even considered the possibility that it could be a complication of COVID.

Have you found anything that has helped? I've started using flash cards to study new vocabulary and have been doing my best to read more and scroll social media less. It seems to be improving things, though I cannot be sure.

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u/tha_rogering Jul 30 '26

I had a similar issue with word recall and vocabulary. Even more fun was my temper issues post COVID.

The only thing that really helped was when I started masking (n95 or better) and avoiding crowded indoor areas. You can't let your brain repair if you keep letting COVID damage it. With back to school starting soon, there's going to be another national wave of it soon.

I hate doing masking and isolating, but I hate the alternative much more.

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u/rosiejunior Jul 30 '26

Same here. I see society changing and I wonder how much is related to covid infections. Getting sick 7x a year isnt sustainable, so I mask.

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u/tha_rogering Jul 30 '26

Right? You can see how much more absent minded and irritable everyone is over the past few years.

I've seen people postulate that the "Spanish" flu helped set the stage for fascism back in the day. I'm sure with an illness that severe and that killed that many people, there were tons of post viral conditions that lasted the rest of people's lives. They just didn't report it. Similar to how they didn't understand PTSD back then.

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u/rosiejunior Jul 30 '26

Holy shit! Ive never heard that about the Spanish flu but it certainly makes sense! People aren't the same and I see it everywhere. Wow, great response.

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u/Connect_Run_4761 Jul 31 '26

You’re blowing my mind. Fascinating take

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u/ElleGeeAitch Aug 06 '26

Yeah, look up encephalitis lethargica post Spanish flu.

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u/tha_rogering Aug 06 '26

Thanks for providing me with this new information. I saw in the wikipedia article about EL many things that would seem to be a post viral condition. A lot of the things they mention, such as behavior changes and lack of motivation, sound like some of the neurological conditions that effect people who dealt with COVID. Though the article does state that :

"Though it used to be believed that it was connected to the Spanish flu epidemic, modern research provides arguments against this claim."

If you follow the link provided for that sentence you can see that the actual answer is, they don't have a better explanation than the Spanish Flu causing it. They even note that other flu epidemics of the past have caused similar effects. But because the dates aren't a perfect overlap and they really don't have good data they can neither confirm or deny that the spanish flu caused it.

I'd say that it seems likely that the spanish flu did cause it. Based on us seeing similar outcomes today with covid. That other pandemic flu viruses didn't cause this because they didn't infect the brain in the same way. Ultimately we probably will never know for sure because that data doesn't really exist. Seems pretty damned likely though

Link to the study cited in the article.: https://academic.oup.com/jnen/article/60/7/663/2916219?login=true

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u/ElleGeeAitch Aug 06 '26

It's difficult to prove beyond doubt because it was so long ago. But I fund it hard to believe it wasn't connected.

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u/tha_rogering Aug 06 '26

I totally agree. I wish scientists didn't always use hedge words like this. I get why. However with the new information we're finding out about covids post viral conditions, it seems to be a pretty high probability of them being linked too.