Abstract
COVID-19 has been associated with cognitive dysfunction and psychiatric disorders. The subjective cognitive complaints can occurred in approximately 90% of these individuals after the infection by COVID 19. In this context, there is an urgent need to develop treatment for Post-Acute Sequelae of Sars-Cov2 (PASC). The transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) is a non-invasive brain stimulation intervention with potential as a PASC treatment as it can modulate neuronal excitability, brain vascular function , which can result in modulation of neural circuits cognitive, and psychiatric disorders. Preliminary results from a pilot study a decrease of cognitive and emotional complaints evaluated by A-PASC inventory. The neuropsychological assessment showed that the participants had a better perform for delayed and immediate recall in the verbal episodic memory task. They showed an improving trend in lexicon assess, and in phonemic verbal fluency. The same was observed for the sustained attention task. Also, the participants showed a trend in becoming faster and more accurate in processing speed, and in executive function (inhibitory control, cognitive flexibility and time management). Based on these findings, we are performing an pilot randomized sham-controlled trial consisting of 20-minute, 2mA, 20 daily sessions of bilateral prefrontal (anodal-left/cathodal-right) tDCS (1x1 Mini-CT, Soterix Medical, New York, NY) plus online cognitive training using the BrainHQ platform (Posit Science, San Francisco, Glenn Smith). We will compare the efficacy of active vs. sham tDCS, combined with cognitive training, to improve these neurocognitive symptoms.
Research Category and Technology and Methods
Translational Research: 9. Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation (tDCS)
Keywords: tDCS, Long COVID-19, Neurocognitive Symptoms
OS07.3
Footnotes
Abstract key: PL- Plenary talks; S- Regular symposia oral; FS- Fast-Track symposia oral; OS- On-demand symposia oral; P- Posters