‼️‼️‼️🧠🧠🧠Long Covid and ME/CFS differences in the brain as seen using 7- Tesla MRI

Distinct functional connectivity (FC) patterns in myalgic encephalomyelitis and long COVID patients during cognitive fatigue: a 7 Tesla task-fMRI study

Temporal correlation of neural activity between distinct brain regions, also referred to as functional connectivity (FC), can provide insights into how brain networks coordinate, at rest or during task. Therefore, we explored intrinsic FC correlates of cognitive fatigue in ME/CFS and long COVID patients during two Stroop-colour-word paradigms on 7 Tesla fMRI. The Stroop Color and Word Test (SCWT) measures cognitive interference, attention, and processing speed by forcing the brain to inhibit the automatic, faster habit of reading words in favor of the slower task of naming ink colors. It highlights a, "Stroop effect," where naming the ink color of a mismatched word (e.g., "RED" in blue ink) causes a significant delay in reaction time and increases errors.

faculty.washington.edu/chudler/java/r…

Plain language: Only a 7-Tesla MRI ( not the 1.5 or 3.0 Tesla one most patients get scans on) shows that both #LongCovid and #MECFS patients had large hippocampi ( part of the brain) . It maybe “in your head” but your doctor can’t see it because she does have access to sharp enough images
Structural MRI data was acquired with sub-millimeter isotropic resolution on a 7 Telsa MRI scanner and hippocampal subfield volumes were then estimated for each participant using FreeSurfer software. Our study found significantly larger volumes in the left hippocampal subfields of both long COVID and ME/CFS patients compared to HC.

COVID is a virus that is to be studied in labs with Biosafety Level 3 (BSL-3). Here is what the Dept of Health and Human Services requires in BSL-3 labs: 2)”BSL-3 laboratories are used to study infectious agents or toxins that may be transmitted through the air and cause potentially lethal infection through inhalation exposure.