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COVID-19: How is the virus impacting the brain?
As we cross the one year mark of the COVID-19 pandemic, the long-term effects of of the virus are being studied. One area doctors are looking at - the brain. Author: Katie Jeffries Updated: 2:33 PM EST February 17, 2021
JACKSONVILLE, Fla. Just over a year in, doctors and scientists are still learning about the long-term effects of COVID-19. A study out of the Harvard-affiliated Massachusetts General Hospital showed possible brain damage in patients recovering from COVID-19.
It s one of several long-term effects doctors here in Jacksonville are studying as well. Some of those who have contracted COVID-19 have fully recovered, but others may still be feeling lingering effects like fatigue, body aches, loss of smell, brain fogs or headaches.
More than 80 percent of U.S. physicians reported that people with significant disabilities have worse quality of life than nondisabled people, an attitude that may contribute to health care disparities among people with disability, according to recent research published in the February issue of Health Affairs.
The first-of-its-kind study surveyed 714 practicing physicians from multiple specialties and locations across the country about their attitudes toward patients with disabilities.
“That physicians have negative attitudes about patients with disability wasn’t surprising,” said Lisa I. Iezzoni, lead author of the paper and a health care policy researcher at Harvard-affiliated Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH). “But the magnitude of physicians’ stigmatizing views was very disturbing.”
Single neurons linked to social reasoning identified for first time
For the first time, scientists have identified the individual neurons critical to human social reasoning, a cognitive process that requires us to acknowledge and predict others’ hidden beliefs and thoughts.
A team of neuroscientists at Harvard-affiliated Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) and Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) had a rare look at how individual neurons represent the beliefs of others by recording neuron activity in patients undergoing neurosurgery to alleviate symptoms of motor disorders such as Parkinson’s disease. Their findings are published in Nature.
The researchers were studying a very complex social cognitive process called “theory of mind.” “When we interact, we must be able to form predictions about another person’s unstated intentions and thoughts,” says MGH neurosurgeon and the paper’s senior author Ziv Williams. “This ability requires us to paint a mental p
A diet rich in healthy and plant-based foods is linked with the presence and abundance of certain gut microbes that are also associated with a lower risk of developing conditions such as obesity, Type 2 diabetes, and cardiovascular disease, according to recent results from a large-scale international study that was co–senior authored by Andrew T. Chan, from Harvard-affiliated Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH). The report appears in Nature Medicine.
“This study demonstrates a clear association between specific microbial species in the gut, certain foods, and risk of some common diseases,” says Chan, a gastroenterologist, chief of the Clinical and Translational Epidemiology Unit at MGH, and professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School. “We hope to be able to use this information to help people avoid serious health problems by changing their diet to personalize their gut microbiome.”