All of last week, I spent finalizing my annotations for my literature review. I chose four important texts from both my sub-categories and thoroughly annotated them for crucial details. I noticed several important correlations among the texts that I read: women are more prone to neurological and psychological complications, neural inflammation and the cytokine storm are the most common causes of psychological symptoms, and COVID-19 exacerbated pre-existing psychological conditions. Although I hypothesized that COVID-19 would most likely lead to further psychological complications, I did not anticipate that it would be so closely related to inflammation. This just goes to show how interconnected the immune system and the central nervous system are connected, as even diseases that mainly affect immune and pulmonary health have an impact on behavior.
On Friday, March 26th I attended another mentor visit with Dr. Didehbani. I spoke to her about converting my annotations into written word for my final literature review. She taught me how to effectively set up an introduction with context of the disease. We also discussed how I would divide my body paragraphs based on cognition and mental health. Cognition would focus on fatigue, processing speed, memory, concentration, attention, and other cognitive factors, while mental health would focus on specific disorders such as PTSD, depression, and anxiety. I am excited to finally translate my written word into text over the next week and finalize my product.
