Recent data has found that coronavirus may have long term impacts on the brain or even an individual's personality.
While boosters can help prevent people from severe illness or COVID-19 hospitalization, there are even bigger reasons to try and avoid getting sick in the first place.
"Some people have pretty persistent cognitive issues," Dr. Joanna Hellmuth, a neurologist at UCSF, said Thursday on KCBS Radio's "Ask an Expert." "Problems with remembering certain events, coming up with names and words, staying focused, slow thinking, things like that."
The part of the brain that regulates these functions is the frontal lobe, which also controls emotion and behavior. It's not surprising that we're seeing changes to personality due to COVID-19, said Hellmuth.
"Some people say, 'You know what, I feel like I'm a little bit of a different person, I have less control over my emotions.' Or other people think 'I just feel more apathetic, my motivation isn’t quite there anymore.' These are biological functions in our brain," she explained.
Scientists are still unsure why COVID-19 affects the brain in this way.
"The question is, is the virus doing some damage early on that is persisting over time?" Hellmuth contemplated. "Or maybe it's the immune system that gets activated and aggravated and that persistent activation is contributing to some of these cognitive and neurological problems."
Hellmuth said she hopes the cognitive issues will eventually go away, but admitted that scientists do not yet know if they will.
Related
