They study the effects of solitude on the brain’s creative capacity

Since the isolation caused by the coronavirus pandemic began, a neuroscientist Heidi I’m Maria Viola 54 and his team are working on trying to assess the effects of COVID-19 on people’s mental health and cognition during the pandemic. This week, rise to L’Oréal-UNESCO National Science Award, which are delivered with Conicet, which will allow them to extend this work and come to more conclusions.

“The idea behind the research that we’re doing with a large team of colleagues is to try to identify some of the social impacts of the pandemic,” Viola said. Profile personly. “Among other things, we are trying to see in detail what happened in perceptual And understand whether the perceived impact has more to do with the direct consequences of the virus on the brain or is more related to how society is responding to the pandemic.”

The expert, who is a researcher at Conicet and works at the Institute of Cell Biology and Neurosciences”Eduardo De Roberts‘, has been studying issues of the biology of memory for many years and elaborates that ‘Through this work we distinguish levels of disturbance from worry widely and depression. and analyze how people’s “creative” abilities and memory remained after the wave of infection.” In order to analyze this relationship, they resorted to various management the exams Perception is known and validated through years of use.

“To get good results, we must evaluate the data taking into account that each of these records may differ depending on each person, their gender, age, physical activity, how they have gone through time of social isolation, their working status and also after they have been vaccinated or after they have been infected with the Covid-19 virus,” world said.

“Exercise more often appears to act as a protector against severe stress”

The team will receive one amount million pesos You plan to invest in resources to expedite job completion. Viola explained that they are organizing what is happening on this issue in Argentina in order to determine the effects on mental health and compare them with other countries. These cases are receiving international attention and similar investigations are being conducted in many countries. The idea is to be able to gather solid evidence that makes it easier for health officials to clarify Better public policies in the face of these problems.”

Preliminary results

Viola explained, “In this year and a half of work we have completed two surveys and are analyzing the preliminary results. But what can really be verified is that the community at large raised it. levels Epidemiological concern. And in particular, we saw that from the most affected The women were between the ages of 18 and 30.” According to the expert, this “consistent with what was found in other countries: young women They are the most vulnerable group and this has had the greatest impact on anxiety and depression.”

-What have you found so far?
– In this year and a half we have completed two surveys and are analyzing the preliminary results. But what has already been verified is that society in general has increased levels of anxiety due to the pandemic. In particular, we saw that one of the hardest hit groups was women between the ages of 18 and 30. This is consistent with what has been found in other countries: young women are the most vulnerable group and have the greatest impact on anxiety and depression.

What are the consequences of isolation?
It’s a situation that seems to have become a risk factor. Those who maintained maximum social isolation were also the people who recognized that they had the highest levels of anxiety and depression. On the other hand, those who did more physical activity, at least three times a week, seemed to experience the situation with a lower level of anxiety or depression. From there we can get a lesson for the future that will help us design better public policies: exercising more frequently appears to be an effective preventative in high-stress situations that may affect our mental health.

How did vaccination work on this issue?
– At the time of the survey in May this year, there was already a large percentage of people vaccinated. And what we found was that among the people who reported lower levels of depression, the fact that they had received the vaccine was one of the factors that contributed to the alleviation of this mental state. It is clear that the vaccination campaign helped people realize themselves less depressed.

Exam Scholarship
Besides the main award, another researcher has also been awarded in the category “ScholarshipThis year’s award winner was Anna Sol-Benetti, Research Associate working at the Institute of Chemistry, Physics, Environment and Energy (now I’m – conical). This distinction came about for his work “Monitoring SARS-CoV-2 Variants through Rapid Antigen Detection.” Specifically, his project aims to develop a Test from Antigens Very sensitive and very specific. But also taking into account the economic cost of making it available, not forgetting to analyze the possibility of manufacturing the test locally, facilitating the mass use of these tests.