COVID-19 effects on cognition

Photo by Pavel Danilyuk (Pexels) - A new long-term study led by neuroscientists at Western University shows short-term symptoms from COVID-19, like laboured breathing, fever, and dry cough, may just be the proverbial tip of the iceberg. The findings, published by Cell Reports Medicine , reveal short and possible long-term cognitive impairments among people who had COVID-19. With a robust data set collected by participants using the Cambridge Brain Sciences online scientific investigation tool , principal investigators Adrian Owen and Conor Wild discovered significant impairments in reasoning, speed of thinking and verbal abilities in patients with confirmed cases of COVID-19, but no losses in memory functioning. "The pattern of cognitive impairment in these COVID-19 patients resembles that of healthy study participants who are sleep-deprived," said Owen, professor of cognitive neuroscience and imaging at Western's Schulich School of Medicine & Dentistry. In 2017, Owen and Wild conducted the world's largest sleep study , with more than 40,000 people participating, using the same online scientific investigation tool. For the COVID-19 brain study, Owen, Wild and their collaborators at Western, University of Cambridge, Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre, and University of Ottawa assessed nearly 500 people approximately three months after a confirmed diagnosis of COVID-19. The participants' COVID-19 experiences ranged from "very mild" to "ICU on ventilation."The researchers found the severity of the cognitive impairments was directly related to the severity of the original infection.