Executive Functioning and Sleep Fragmentation in COVID-19 Patients

While impaired executive functioning has been often reported in association with COVID-19 contagion, it is still unclear whether, and to what extent, executive deficits might be explained by an altered quality of sleep, that been also frequently reported in COVID-19 patients. On this basis, this project aims to investigate executive functioning abilities (primary outcome) in patients hospitalized for a COVID-19 contagion, while distinguishing between those with and without sleep fragmentation (quality of sleep; secondary outcome), compared with an age- and education matched control group of healthy individuals who did not experience contagion. To this purpose, 38 COVID-19 patients and 38 healthy controls will be administered questionnaires and cognitive tasks aimed to assess: a) executive functioning/inhibitory control (GoNogo task); b) quality of sleep (NOSAS; Insomnia Severity Index; Epworth sleepiness scale). Prefrontal electrical activity will be recorded with EEG in COVID-19 patients, and related to sleep and cognitive-executive metrics. Statistical analyses will be aimed to investigate: a) a possible decrease of executive skills in COVID-19 patients compared with healthy controls, and in COVID-19 patients with fragmented sleep compared with those with normal sleep; b) possible differences in the relationship between executive performance and quality of sleep across the three experimental groups; c) whether possible differences in such relationship relate to prefrontal brain activity in patients. The results of this study will provide novel insights into the consequences of COVID-19 at the cognitive level, thus informing about treatment strategies.

Inclusion criteria

• For patients: current contagion from COVID-19
• For patients and controls:
• age>18 years
• absence of clinical conditions, cognitive and sensory deficits, and severe psychiatric disorders that would impair participation in research identified through clinical history.

Exclusion criteria

• current or past neuro-psychiatric disorder
• current or past sleep disorder