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Brain changes after COVID revealed by imaging

Imaging before and after infection by the SARS-CoV-2 virus reveals substantial changes in the brain after infection. The work sets an example for the high standards required in large longitudinal neuroimaging studies.
By
  1. Randy L. Gollub

    1. Randy L. Gollub is in the McCance Center for Brain Health, Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, Massachusetts 02114, USA, and in the Harvard–MIT Division of Health Sciences & Technology, Harvard Medical School, Boston.

Myriad neuropsychiatric symptoms have been attributed to infection with the SARS-CoV-2 virus1,2, from lost sense of smell and taste to headaches, memory problems and more. Knowing precisely how the brain is changed by infection would help us to understand these debilitating symptoms. Large-scale brain-imaging studies can provide quantitative measures of subtle changes — but conducting these studies presents a formidable challenge. Writing in Nature, Douaud et al.3 describe 785 sets of brain scans that mark the first step in tackling this challenge head-on.

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Nature 604, 633-634 (2022)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-022-00503-x

References

  1. COVID-19 Mental Disorders Collaborators. Lancet 398, 1700–1712 (2021).

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  3. Douaud, G. et al. Nature 604, 697–707 (2022).

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  4. Littlejohns, T. J. et al. Nature Commun. 11, 2624 (2020).

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  7. Alfaro-Almagro, F. et al. NeuroImage 224, 117002 (2021).

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Competing Interests

The author declares no competing interests.

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