Abstract

Objective: Tracking cognitive impairment in patients with coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) requires objective markers to monitor therapy responses and prognosticate neurological recovery. We sought to assess if quantitative EEG (QEEG) analysis could help identifying peculiar features suggesting COVID-19 related encephalopathy regardless of brain damage related to pulmonary failure.

Methods: A patient, who survived to a severe respiratory failure due to COVID-19 pneumonia, developed a severe neurocognitive syndrome. The patient underwent QEEG monitoring (global coherence, GC) before after one month of intensive cardiopulmonary and motor rehabilitation.

Results: We found a high-frequency strong central-temporal-parietal connectivity at baseline. This was replaced by low-frequency frontal-parietal connectivity. EEG signals and their modifications were unrelated to the former acute respiratory failure.

Conclusion: A decrease of front parietal GC in the upper alpha and beta band in resting state may be a key feature of COVID-19-related encephalopathy. This may depend on a virus-induced brain damage causing loss of connections that are essential to orchestrate the interactions between brain regions at a global level concerning cognitive functions. Significance: Our data suggest that assessing GC seems promising to evidence a frontoparietal connectivity impairment sustaining the COVID-19 neurocognitive syndrome. Once confirmed in larger samples, these QEEG findings may support clinicians in the management and prognosis of COVID-19 patients.

Keywords: Quantitative EEG; Global coherence; COVID-19 neurocognitive syndrome; SARS-CoV-2; Functional connectivity