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Updated: Jul 1, 2025
Working Memory Training for Older Participants: A Control Group Training Regimen and Initial Intellectual Functioning Assessment
Published on: September 20, 2020
Long-term findings on working memory neural dynamics in healthcare workers after mild COVID-19
David Ferrera1, Diego Galán1, Irene Peláez1
1Department of Psychology, School of Health Sciences, Universidad Rey Juan Carlos, Madrid, Spain; Cognitive Neuroscience, Pain and Rehabilitation Research Group (NECODOR), School of Health Sciences, Universidad Rey Juan Carlos, Madrid, Spain.
Objective:
Understanding the long-term impact of Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) on cognitive function, even in mild cases, is critical to the well-being of individuals, especially for healthcare workers who are at increased risk of exposure to the virus. To the best of our knowledge, the electrophysiological activity underlying cognitive functioning has not yet been explored.
Methods:
Seventy-seven healthcare workers took part in the study (43 with mild infection about one year before the study and 34 uninfected). To assess cognitive status, event-related potentials (ERPs) and behavioural responses were recorded while participants performed a working memory task.
Results:
COVID-19 participants exhibited a distinct neural pattern with lower parieto-occipital N1 amplitudes and higher frontal P2 amplitudes as compared to non-infected healthcare workers. We found no behavioural differences (reaction times and error rates) in working memory functioning between groups.
Conclusions:
This neural pattern suggests the presence of a decrement of processing resources linked to the encoding of sensory information (N1), followed by the enhanced of the P2 response which could be interpreted as the activation of compensation mechanism in COVID-19 participants.
Significance:
The current findings point out that ERPs could serve as valuable neural indices for detecting distinctive patterns in working memory functioning of COVID-19 participants, even in mild cases. However, further research is required to precisely ascertain the long-term cognitive effects of COVID-19 beyond one-year post-infection.
