Carrisa Cocuzza (Postdoc. PI: Avram Holmes. Cognitive fog in long COVID: brain network dynamics in a densely-sampled case study.

Individuals with long COVID syndrome can present with impaired memory, ability to focus, fatigue, and malaise for months to years after initial SARS-CoV-2 infection. Despite the substantial personal and societal costs of long COVID, our current understanding of the underlying brain mechanisms, processes, and risk factors remains limited. Building on historical study of univariate activity and stationary network features, evidence suggests that brain network dynamics explain more variance in disrupted cognition and behavior exhibited by neuropsychiatric patients. I will discuss the rationale motivating this emerging framework and showcase our ongoing project on how cognitive fog associated with long COVID can be triggered through task-probes and is manifested in brain network dynamics. Here, we conducted a densely-sampled case study of an individual patient with long COVID who underwent over 40 resting- and task-state fMRI sessions. In each study session, intrinsic (resting-state) scans bookended task-evoked scans, allowing us to investigate the persistent impacts of cognitive fog provocation on intrinsic brain network dynamics. We found evidence that brain connectivity changes were significantly different between fog and non-fog provoking sessions. Effects were exhibited across the whole brain, but prominent in somatomotor, cognitive control, and subcortical brain systems. Then, we tested two hypotheses about post-fog modification processes: (1) network dynamics get “stuck” in a task-state regime, and (2) structured disruptions to network dynamics spread and are maintained across time. The translational impact of understanding how long COVID symptoms are instantiated in brain network dynamics will be discussed.

Seminar zoom link: https://rutgers.zoom.us/j/98124487248?pwd=hVE13L7ktwk1Iwa9SNvUWJ3kpQDqNw.1