--- title: COVID-19 Linked to Detectable Brain Changes: Study description: A study shows differences between people who have recovered from infections and those who haven’t had COVID-19. canonical: https://time.com/6235600/covid-19-brain-changes-linked/ author: Alice Park article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2022-11-21T21:08:04.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-02-24T15:05:23.206Z article:section: Health og:title: COVID-19 Is Linked to Detectable Brain Changes, Study Shows og:description: A brain-imaging study shows differences between people who have recovered from infections and those who haven’t had COVID-19 og:url: https://time.com/6235600/covid-19-brain-changes-linked/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltc3bc59ebf0d3250d/698a382a16d8847b44c3b532/rapid-test-positive.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 3776 og:image:height: 2124 og:image:alt: rapid-test-positive og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: COVID-19 Is Linked to Detectable Brain Changes, Study Shows twitter:description: A brain-imaging study shows differences between people who have recovered from infections and those who haven’t had COVID-19 twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltc3bc59ebf0d3250d/698a382a16d8847b44c3b532/rapid-test-positive.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # COVID-19 Is Linked to Detectable Brain Changes, Study Shows > Sponsored content. 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Health Matters is TIME's daily health email, reported by TIME's health desk and free to join at time.com/newsletters. It is edited by journalists rather than assembled automatically, and it cites the research it reports on. #### Is Health Matters free? Yes. Health Matters is a free daily newsletter from TIME, available at time.com/newsletters. #### Who reads TIME's Health Matters newsletter? Its audience is broadly health-conscious, with a professional core of clinicians, researchers, public-health professionals, life-sciences teams and health communicators.  by [Alice Park](https://time.com/author/alice-park/)  ## Alice Park Senior Correspondent Nov 21, 2022 9:08 PM UTC  Bristol / UK - May 04, 2021 : Adult hand with protective glove with the Test Result by Using self Rapid Test Device for COVID-19 Coronavirus. Bristol / UK - May 04, 2021 : Adult hand with protective glove with the Test Result by Using self Rapid Test Device for COVID-19 Coronavirus. Getty Images  by [Alice Park](https://time.com/author/alice-park/)  ## Alice Park Senior Correspondent Nov 21, 2022 9:08 PM UTC While the world is learning to live with COVID-19, scientists still have many unanswered questions about how the infection affects the body and brain—not just when people are sick, but over the long term as well. In a study presented at the [annual meeting](https://www.rsna.org/annual-meeting) of the Radiological Society of North America, researchers report on changes to the brain among people who have recovered from COVID-19. The scientists conducted MRI scans of the brains of 46 people who had had COVID-19 within the past six months, and compared them to the scans of 30 people who had never been infected. They found that most of the people who had recovered from COVID-19 had changes in the circulation of tiny blood vessels in the frontal lobe and brain stem areas, which are involved in higher order cognitive skills such as language expression and voluntary movements. Compared to the control group, this group showed reduced circulation in these microvessels. Exactly how that might translate to daily activities isn’t clear yet; the researchers did not follow up with detailed analyses of cognitive function in the two groups. But Bharat Biswal, professor of biomedical engineering at New Jersey Institute of Technology and a co-investigator of the research, says the team is exploring how these changes might affect other functions. Some of the participants, for example, had high blood pressure or other chronic conditions that might also play a role in how their brains were affected by COVID-19, and the scientists are looking into whether the people with such underlying health conditions showed different levels of brain changes compared to those without these conditions. The study builds on previous [work](https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ynirp.2022.100095) Biswal and his colleagues conducted, which documented structural changes in the brain that distinguished people who had been hospitalized and recovered from COVID-19 from those who had not been infected. That study found changes in the limbic system and hippocampus of the brain, which oversees emotional and behavioral activities, as well as memory. Taken together, says Biswal, the results “provide an initial idea of where to look and what parameters to look at” for scientists studying the effects of Long COVID. He and his team are hoping to track the volunteers in the study for longer to better document how lasting the changes are. “COVID-19 has multi-dimensional effects on the body,” he says, including in the brain. And while the scientists haven’t yet investigated people who have been reinfected, [multiple bouts with COVID-19 may also cause cumulative changes](https://time.com/6232103/covid-19-reinfections-effects/) on various systems in the body. Biswal says he “worries a little bit” about how reinfections “might show up in the brain and other organs. 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