Can COVID-19 alter your personality? Here's what brain research shows.

Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, and traumatic brain injury can cause changes in behavior by altering brain anatomy. Now it seems the coronavirus can too.

Photojournalist Jalal Shamsazaran documented his father’s battle with Alzheimer's disease. In this photograph Shamsazaran's mother reminds him that this is the house he built many years ago. Neuroscientists have noted that some long COVID symptoms mirror those of neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s.
Photograph by Jalal Shamsazaran, NVP Images

At the height of the COVID-19 tsunami that engulfed New York City in early 2020, a highly respected emergency room doctor, Lorna Breen, died by suicide. She had been serving as medical director at Manhattan’s NewYork Presbyterian Allen Hospital, and she was regarded as brilliant, energetic, and organized. She had no history of mental illness. But that changed after Breen contracted the virus.

The 49-year-old doctor first showed symptoms on March 18. After a 10-day illness, she returned to work. Her family was alarmed: She was confused, hesitant, nearly catatonic, exhausted. Something was wrong. They brought her home to Charlottesville, and Breen checked into a psychiatric ward at University of Virginia Medical Center. Soon after she was released on

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