How catching Covid can shrink your brain

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Researchers looking at how Covid affects the brain found that even after mild infection, the overall size of the brain shrinks slightly, with less grey matter in the parts that relate to smell and memory. BBC Health Correspondent Rebecca Morelle explains how the study compared scans before and after participants caught covid, most of them suffering mild symptoms. The researchers don't know if the changes are permanent, or the effects of more recent Covid variants, but point out that the brain can heal itself. Lead author Prof Gwenaelle Douaud, from the Wellcome Centre for Integrative Neuroimaging, at the University of Oxford, notes that people who had Covid also experienced more difficulty performing complex tasks, and that this could relate to how much of their brain had shrunk. Photo: A person doing a jigsaw Credit: Getty Images