# Covid and Noun-Memory Effects

Source: https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2024/06/14/covid-and-noun-memory-effects
Kiwi News: https://news.kiwistand.com/stories/Covid-and-Noun-Memory-Effects?index=0x666ca3d5cee0c1042c946710739f69ab25bfc901571018d984943c7172d6dd893edbb9fe
Submitted by misha on 2024-06-14 UTC, 1 upvote, 0 comments

## Summary

The author, who had a mild Covid infection in late 2022, reports persistent difficulty remembering proper nouns, especially names of actors, authors and not-too-close friends and family, while recall of TV character names and other memory types seems unaffected. Brain fog and fatigue from the infection faded after four to six months, but the noun-recall problem has continued. The author's working hypothesis is that long-term recall of low-emotional-salience narratives has eroded, and that proper nouns suffer most because they have no connection to the content being recalled. The author also suspects this has reduced the use of specific proper nouns in writing, and says some Bluesky and Farcaster users reported similar symptoms.

## Article

Ever since I got a bout of Covid a couple of years ago (late 2022), I've noticed memory problems of a very specific sort: Difficulty remembering names. Especially people names, but also other sorts of proper nouns. This is especially marked when it comes to remembering names of actors or authors, or not-too-close friends and family.

Interestingly, there has been little to no effect on my ability to remember the names of characters in TV shows, but I frequently forget actor names, even famous ones I should remember. For example, I've blanked several times on Steve Carrell, which is odd given that my whole career is based on writing about The Office.

I wasn't sure this was just some personal aging thing, or something to do with the tumultuous times we've been living through, versus a Covid effect, but now I'm fairly certain it's a Covid after-effect. I asked on Bluesky and Farcaster, and several people reported similar symptoms. It's very specific. Other kinds of memory don't seem to be affected. I don't think it's aging because 49 is not that old, and this is rather specific and sharply defined. And tumultuous times have been going on since a few years before Covid, and I didn't notice any such effect before 2021.

For the first couple of months after the Covid bout (which was itself mild), I also had the commonly reported brain fog and fatigue effects, but those dissipated about 4-6 months in. But this noun-memory effect has persisted. Someone on Farcaster shared a link suggesting it might have something to do with Lithium, but it's beyond my competence to parse the literature on that.

I thought of taking this concern to my doctor, but it's more annoying (more weird googlings to do, and more note-taking required in meetings) than crippling or debilitating, plus I don't even have the right concepts to describe this. So I thought I'd blog it and see who else has been experiencing this, and whether you can add any more color/evidence/ideas to this thing. And of course, if you've found any easy fixes, please do share.

My current working hypothesis at the cognitive level (I don't understand the neurochemistry level) is that the ability to keep long-term narrative memories well-maintained through recall triggers, for low emotional-salience narratives, has sharply eroded. I care about TV stories, but not so much about the lives of the actors who play the characters. Distant friends and family aren't an integral part of my personal narrative. Proper nouns in particular are affected more because unlike verbs or meaningful phrases (like titles of books), they have no real correlation to the content you're trying to recall. For example, I just blanked on "A. O. Hirschman," but the name has nothing to do with the "Exit, Loyalty, and Voice" book title, which I have no trouble recalling at all. It's weirdly appropriate in a way, that names of people are getting stripped from my memory even as human authorship in general is getting stripped out of the world's knowledge by AI.

I'd have to go back and check, but I think this has affected my writing style. I used to pride myself on my strong memory, and ability to quickly link abstractions to specific examples -- which requires recall of proper nouns from low-emotional-salience stories -- but as this has gotten harder, I've defaulted to writing more in vague generalities. I'd bet my use of proper nouns in my writing has dropped (and/or narrowed) since September 2022 if anyone wants to attempt a data-mining project.

One wild possibility -- if this is indeed a general effect of Covid, maybe it explains the shift from memes (a sharp format that requires recall of proper nouns, both verbally and visually) to vibes, which are nonspecific.