--- title: "Doctors Say Many COVID Survivors Have Memory Loss, Brain Fog" description: "There's a growing body of evidence, the New York Times reports, that COVID adversely affects the memory and concentration of some patients." date: "2020-10-12" modified: "2020-10-12" authors: - name: "Jon Christian" job_title: "Executive Editor" link: "https://futurism.com/authors/jonc" url: "https://futurism.com/neoscope/covid-survivors-memory-loss-brain-fog" categories: - "Brain" - "Health & Medicine" - "Neuroscience and Brain" tags: - "coronavirus" - "covid19" - "health" - "neuroscience" --- # Doctors Say Many COVID Survivors Have Memory Loss, Brain Fog ![There's a growing body of evidence, the New York Times reports, that COVID adversely affects the memory and concentration of some patients.]() *\Image: Pixabay/Futurism\* According to a [grim new story]() in the *New York Times,* there's a growing body of evidence that COVID adversely affects the memory and concentration of some patients — cognitive deficits that society could potentially be grappling with for years after the pandemic is over. Driving the chilling phenomenon home, the newspaper interviewed numerous people who had been hospitalized with COVID, recovered, and then found their lives terribly disrupted afterward by neurological issues. One man, a vascular specialist named Michael Reagan, told the *NYT* that after getting out of the hospital, he realized that he'd completely forgotten a vacation he'd taken to France just weeks earlier. "I look at all my pictures of Paris, trying to remember," he told the paper. "We went and saw a Madonna concert, we went to the Eiffel Tower, we went to the Catacombs. And I remember nothing, nothing at all." Reagan says that his memory problems and brain fog are so severe that he was having trouble in meetings and had to take a leave from work. "I can’t find words," he said in the story. "I feel like I sound like an idiot." We've [already heard]() from COVID "long-haulers," who say their symptoms from the illness have persisted for months. Now, evidence is growing that for some patients, there are specifically neurological symptoms that are long outlasting the disease's acute phase. Investigations into the phenomenon are still early, but what researchers are finding is ominous. A [French study]() referenced by the *NYT*, for instance, examined 120 patients who had been hospitalized for COVID and found that a month later, more than a third said they were suffering from memory loss and more than a quarter reported problems with concentration. And another, soon-to-be-published paper referenced by the *NYT* found that more than half of the members of a group that formed to discuss life after COVID said they were having trouble focusing, along with a raft of other neurological and psychological complaints. It's too early to say for sure what's causing the memory and concentration problems for people like Reagan. But experts told the *NYT* that it likely has to do with inflammation in blood vessels, or possibly tiny strokes. MRIs haven't found signs of damage, though, deepening the mystery. For people suffering from the symptoms, though, the phenomenon is way too real. "It scares me to think I’m working," a nurse practitioner named Lisa Mizelle, who's been suffering from similar symptoms, told the *NYT*. "I feel like I have dementia." ## Author I'm responsible for editing, assigning, and scouting at Futurism, as well as occasionally writing for the site. That work involves keeping an eye on a wide range of narratives and issues, but over the past few years I've become increasingly interested in how AI is shaping the future of media, the web, and information itself. My day-to-day often involves collaborating on reporting and commentary projects bylined by my colleagues, but I try to find time to do my own reporting as well; stories I've broken for Futurism have been cited by publications including the New York Times, the Washington Post, the New Yorker, Wired, Ars Technica, New York Magazine, the Columbia Journalism Review, Bloomberg, and more. I grew up in Southern Vermont and attended Vanderbilt University. Prior to Futurism, I contributed to outlets including the Boston Globe, Vice, Wired, Slate, the Atlantic, the Outline, Ars Technica and more, and did stints in farming and food service. I currently live in Brooklyn, New York, and in my free time I enjoy pinball, word games, cycling, running, and music production. ### Author social links [Bluesky]()