Research Update · Melbourne
The brain that feels stuck is starting to show why
Last week we shared a dispatch from Adelaide. This week, we’re back in Melbourne, with new findings from MELOPIS, and a call for the participants needed to finish it.
MELOPIS investigates structural, neuro-vascular and biochemical differences in the brains of people with ME/CFS, Long COVID and POTS. The aim is to identify targets for future treatments.
For decades, ME/CFS patients have described something the science couldn’t yet explain: their brains feel stuck. The same task drains them in ways that don’t make sense to anyone who hasn’t lived it.
MELOPIS is starting to give that experience a biological shape.
Led through the Melbourne ME/CFS Collaboration, the study uses MRI and PET imaging to look at brain blood flow, inflammation, metabolism and hormones together in the same patients. It also includes a brain scan technique previously used only in Alzheimer’s research.
In this conversation, Dr Chris Armstrong and PhD student Jamie Elliott share where the study is now and what they’re starting to find.
Two early findings are notable. In healthy people, the brain shifts out of its resting network when a task starts; in ME/CFS and Long COVID patients, that shift may not be happening cleanly. Patients are also using wider areas of the brain, and burning more energy, to complete the same cognitive task as healthy people.
These early findings are starting to offer biological explanations for what patients have been describing for decades.
MELOPIS needs participants to finish
The team is recruiting ME/CFS patients, Long COVID patients, and healthy controls. Healthy volunteers are just as important to this research as people living with the conditions.
The study runs in Melbourne, with visits up to eight weeks apart. For some participants, travel from interstate may be possible.
Every participant moves us closer to understanding why these illnesses affect the brain, and what that may mean for future diagnosis and treatment.
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