Long Covid ‘brain fog’

Unexpected Elements

BBC

Science

4.4 • 568 Ratings

🗓️ 11 July 2022

⏱️ 65 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Following a bout of Covid-19, a significant number of people suffer with weeks or months of 'brain fog' - poor concentration, forgetfulness, and confusion. This is one of the manifestations of Long Covid. A team of scientists in the United States has now discovered that infection in the lung can trigger an inflammatory response which then causes patterns of abnormal brain cell activity. It’s the kind of brain cell dysregulation also seen in people who experience cognitive problems following chemotherapy for cancer.

Also in the programme, the latest discoveries about the asteroid Bennu from the Osiris Rex mission, how Malayasian farmers led US researchers to a botanical discovery, and a new explanation for why dinosaurs took over the world 200 million years ago.

Artists can conjure up people, cities, landscapes and entire worlds using just a pencil or a paintbrush. But some of us struggle to draw simple stick figures or a circle that’s actually round. CrowdScience listener Myck is a fine artist from Malawi, and he’s been wondering if there’s something special about his brain that has turned him into an artist. It’s a craft that combines visionary ideas with extraordinary technical skill, but where does that all come from? Do artists have different brains from non-artists? What is it that makes someone a creative person, while others are not? And is artistic ability innate, or is it something you can learn? Presenter Marnie Chesterton goes on a colourful journey into the mind to find out how artistic people see the world differently.

(Image: System of neurons with glowing connections. Credit: Getty Images)

Transcript

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0:00.0	Oh, hello. You have chosen a BBC podcast, but before you listen to it, we thought you might
0:04.7	like our podcast too. You might. You might. It is called Sightracked with me, Nick Grimshaw.
0:09.2	And me, Annie Mack. And we talk about the week in music. All the news, all the cultural
0:14.0	happenings in the UK and beyond. And great guests. And it's on BBC Sounds. Yes, where you can
0:19.7	also enjoy lots of playlists, music mixes and
0:22.6	live radio, everything from my six music breakfast show to Radio 3 Unwind. But obviously start
0:29.2	with our podcast, sidetrack. Obviously. Obviously. So if you like music, listen on BBC
0:33.7	Sounds. Thank you for downloading the Science hour from the BBC World Service with me,
0:38.2	Rell and peas.
0:39.3	I've never had an MRI scan, but it doesn't sound so bad.
0:43.6	While you're lying very, very still, you'll have a machine around, and you're going,
0:46.9	and once you're done, they just press another button.
0:52.4	You come out of the metal donut, and you are completely done with contributing to science.
0:57.6	Crowd Science is creatively scanning the creative mind later in the podcast.
1:03.0	And we're scanning the latest insights into COVID brain fog on science in action,
1:07.8	before that, where we're also hearing about the success of NASA's planetary
1:11.9	smash and grab raid on asteroid Benu, a new take on the naming of plants, and we have a cool
1:18.5	new look at the rise of the dinosaurs.
1:21.2	We got dinosaurs completely wrong. They are fundamentally cold, adapted animals. They are fundamentally insulated. They are fundamentally cold adapted animals. They are fundamentally insulated. And that was the key
1:33.0	to their success. But first, since near the beginning of the pandemic, the big puzzles have included
1:39.1	the causes of long COVID, the cluster of debilitating symptoms affecting different parts of the body
1:45.4	long after the COVID virus has been cleared from the lungs and airways.
	...

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