A recent study reveals that people with long COVID have abnormal brain activity during memory tests, months after their initial COVID-19 infection. Less activity in the regions normally used for memory tasks but more activity in other areas of the brain was observed. Although people who had COVID-19 had cognitive test scores similar to those who never had a history of coronavirus, those who had long COVID had greater brain activation on a working memory task compared to people without prior COVID-19 infections. The study involves 29 people who had COVID-19 an average of seven months earlier and had at least one ongoing neuropsychiatric symptom. Despite ongoing complaints of problems with memory, concentration, and fatigue, people who had COVID-19 had cognitive test scores similar to those who had no history of COVID-19. The study does not prove that COVID-19 caused the brain changes, and a limitation of the study was that it was conducted mainly during the delta variant phase of the pandemic in the United States, so the results do not necessarily show whether newer coronavirus variants may affect the brain similarly. The findings will appear in Neurology.
