Neural correlates of cognitive impairment phenotypes following a COVID-19 infection

TRAVI F; HERNANDEZ MA; KAMIENKOWSKI JE; BIANCHI B; CARELLO A; HELOU B; CRIVELLI L; FERNANDEZ SLEZAK D; ALLEGRI RF; CALANDRI I

Congreso; XXXVIII Sociedad Argentina de Neurociencias; 2023

Subjective complaints on cognitive function impairment following a COVID-19 infection is a recently studied phenomenon that can last for over a year. 42 patients (32 females, 10 males, mean age 56) have approached the clinic with such symptoms and have performed below average on neurocognitive clinical evaluations, mainly in attention, executive control, memory, and language. In this study, we analyze the topology of their functional networks based on connectivity matrices built from resting state functional magnetic resonance imaging protocols carried out on these patients, and compare them to a matched control group (45 patients; 27 females, 18 males, mean age 58) with no prior cognitive impairments at the time of study. Our analysis shows a seizable difference between groups in the average clustering coefficient computed on a range of thresholds (percentage of maximum number of connections in a given network), mostly in the salience network, but also in the dorsal attention and frontoparietal networks. These results support the hypothesis of a difference in neuroanatomical substrate between the two groups and, furthermore, that the COVID-19 infection would be responsible for it.