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. 2020 Nov 12;10(11):852. doi: 10.3390/brainsci10110852

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© 2020 by the authors.

Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).

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Schematic representation showing how SARSars-CoV-2 may infect the respiratory center of the brain. SARSars-CoV-2 may enter the brain through the olfactory mucosa present in the upper nasal cavity. From there, through olfactory axons, it may access the cribriform plate and project to the olfactory epithelium and olfactory bulb. SARSars-CoV-2 further migrates to deeper parts of the brain such as the thalamus and brainstem by trans-synaptic migration and targets the pre-Bötzinger complex, thus possibly causing the collapse of the respiratory center of the brain [62].