Evaluation of possible psychological trauma and brain injuries during COVID-19: A systematic review

With the outbreak of COVID-19, researchers started their studies on the various aspects of the infection by this newly-emerged virus. In addition to the pulmonary infection routes, some signs were discovered regarding psychological and physiological damages.

Our study aimed at collecting the results of the studies around the world on the possible psychological and physiological damages caused by COVID-19 in the neural system. Herein, we gathered 125 related articles up to June 2021 by searching the keywords COVID-19 brain infection, COVID-19 infection disease imaging findings COVID-19, mental health, and COVID-19 in the databases such as Scopus, Pubmed, Web of Science, Google Scholar, and Google. The articles unrelated to the objective of our study were excluded, and finally, 43 articles were used.

In this study, reports indicate an increase in the volume of gray matter in the hippocampus and olfactory lobe and an increase in anisotropy in the white matter in people with the acute form of the disease compared to people without it. Therefore, psychologically, some forms of mental rumination and apathy were confirmed in affected people.

Considering the probable inability of the SARS-COV virus to cross the blood-brain barrier, the reason for the neuropathological lesions and brain encephalopathies has yet to be discerned, and this is a somewhat unknown mechanism