Cliff Morrison recently became disoriented while driving and ended himself in the forest.
He pulled over, glanced around, and realized he was on a tree-lined street half a mile from his home in the Oakland
hills, on his way to the post office.
Morrison, 70, didn’t have dementia. He had Covid-19.
Morrison, a health care administrator, has suffered an unexplained and mercifully brief loss of orientation four or
five times since his diagnosis in April 2020, the most recent around Labor Day and always close to home. It no
longer terrifies him. Now he’s simply intrigued.
So are his doctors.
“There are viruses that can cause cognitive issues in otherwise healthy people”—and COVID is obviously one of them,
said Dr. Joanna Hellmuth, a UCSF neurologist.
A new offers the worrisome suggestion that the coronavirus not only can shrink the brain, but also reduce “gray
matter thickness,” damage tissue in areas associated with the sense of smell, and cause more than 60 other long-
term changes to that essential organ.
The paper, published on August 18, has not yet been peer reviewed. However, it has gained interest because the
researchers were able to compare hundreds of brain scans of the same subjects before and after COVID struck. Of
the 785 participants, 401 tested positive for the coronavirus prior to their second scan, providing researchers with a
unique opportunity to see how each brain may have changed as a result.
The paper, published on August 18, has not yet been peer reviewed. However, it has gained interest because the
researchers were able to compare hundreds of brain scans of the same subjects before and after COVID struck. Of
the 785 participants, 401 tested positive for the coronavirus prior to their second scan, providing researchers with a
unique opportunity to see how each brain may have changed as a result.
