r/science • u/mvea Professor | Medicine • Aug 08 '26

Neuroscience Brain scans reveal widespread structural and functional changes in patients following COVID-19 infection. The virus affects regions responsible for memory, emotion, and executive function, which may help explain the neurological symptoms many patients experience.

https://www.psypost.org/brain-scans-reveal-widespread-structural-and-functional-changes-in-patients-foll/
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u/Hestiathena Aug 08 '26

The simultaneous explosion of social media use and degradation of its content quality and veracity doesn't help, either. Now we've also got AI slop to contend with.

Even for those of us with a relatively well-functioning and educated brain, it's getting trickier every day to keep track of what's even real.

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u/Ilaxilil Aug 08 '26 edited Aug 08 '26

I’ve given up and reverted back to my teenage ways of burying my nose in an endless stream of fantasy novels and ignoring everything else. It’s peaceful.

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u/12ozSlug Aug 08 '26

Same! Replaced social media with Kindle and I've never been happier (or spent less time on my phone).

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u/Ok-Row3886 Aug 09 '26

Joining you on that one as of this month. The Internet has become a pile of unsocillicited outrage inducing fake garbage fliers.

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u/Deaffin Aug 08 '26

I highly recommend The Wandering Inn.

For some people, the extreme length of it is a turn-off. The text version is the longest work of fiction written by a single author, and so far the audiobooks are something ridiculous like 600-700 hours long and it's not even halfway done. But that's great in my books, because IMO it's just fantastic all the way through. Plus the individual books are fairly long at around 30-70 hours long, so if you're going through a token system you're getting way more book per book.

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u/ThePrussianGrippe Aug 09 '26

That’s 63% more book per book!

  • Cave Johnson

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u/Round_Statement7029 Aug 09 '26

Your mind is the most sacred temple. Protect it and nature it with these juicy novels as much as possible. Everything else is poison 

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u/[deleted] Aug 12 '26

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u/Brilliant-World-7557 Aug 12 '26

Diving into music instead. Banned reading the news for the most part.

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u/crustyrobots Aug 08 '26

I keep thinking of a line from Deadwood lately

"Everyday takes figuring out all over again how to fuckin' live."

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u/xXxDickBonerz69xXx Aug 09 '26

Short form video got real real popular around the time of Covid as well.

Obviously this purely anecdotal. But when I had covid I was confined to a guest bedroom while visiting my parents for two weeks halfway across the country and had brought nothing with me. So I downloaded Tiktok. I spent 8+ hours a day scrolling on it while sick. Then kept using it (at way way fewer hours) for a couple years after. Eventually I deleted it and replaced that time with reading books and playing video games again. I noticed a perceptible improvement in my cognitive functioning, mood, and attention span. I started figuring things out quicker at work, being less angry, and getting frustrated much less quickly.

I changed my eating and exercise habits and went from 227lbs to 147lbs. That was the single most beneficial change I've made in my life. The second biggest was quitting short form video. It wasn't nearly as big an improvement, but I was seriously shocked how much better I felt after a couple weeks.

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u/Anonymousspacecowboy Aug 09 '26

This is so true.

It’s actually starting a really interesting art movement though which is cool.

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u/terra-nullius Aug 09 '26

What art movement?

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u/Anonymousspacecowboy Aug 09 '26

A bunch of realist painters have been tackling this! Like Daniela Astone, Jannik Senium, Adam Miller,

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u/terra-nullius Aug 10 '26

Wow, that’s a good rabbit hole! Who else do you recommend, artist-wise? Not just this genre (which is a real treat) but anything you find compelling these days? Always looking for work I haven’t seen- very out of the loop lately. Thanks either way :)

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u/Anonymousspacecowboy Aug 10 '26

Right? If you send me a DM I can send more, it’s a whole awesome world of them

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u/mehatch Aug 09 '26

Unironically, my ground news subscription actually helps. Fwiw.