COVID-19: Effects on Brain and qEEG Correlates-A Window Into the Future

Abstract

While the world is aware of Covid’s devastating effect on the world’s health and economy worldwide, this event has highlighted the need to understand how viruses and other micro infectious events enter and effect the brain contributing to changes in function and behavior. Given that this and other viruses do indeed enter the brain, studies are now being turned to understand possible residual effects on behavior and brain function. More than ever, the need to understand how such infiltration leads to demyelinating and general neuroinflammatory processes and this has been noted effecting frontal lobes and brainstem structures. Initial structural neuroimaging studies have evidenced generalized encephalopathies and damage particularly to medial temporal regions. Studies showing that as much as six months following discharge from hospitalization, there are reports that over 30% of patients are experiencing decline in cognitive functioning and over 20% of patients experience significant mood regulation problems. Functional neuroimaging studies have corroborated structural findings in noting dysfunction as expected changes in the frontal regions. EEG studies have also noted frontal regions with increased delta corresponding to these findings. COVID-19 patients with resultant seizures, focal areas have been identified in the temporal, frontotemporal, and central-parietal regions. This presentation will summarize initial efforts to review a clinical sample of qEEG correlates resulting from COVID infection including sLORETA analyses that can help to understand the scaled vulnerability for certain areas of the brain for such infections and shed more light on why certain qEEG features are likely to be expected in the presence of underlying neuroinflammatory mechanisms. Preliminary cases studies with patients post COVID-19 exposure as well as non-exposed neurotypical cases experiencing the neuroinflammatory effects of the COVID vaccination will be presented and reviewed. These cases will illustrate the emerging findings that evidence increased delta and theta absolute power in bilateral frontal poles, fronto-temporal regions and central-parietal regions and increased volumetric deviations in the frontal and temporal regions by sLORETA analyses with concomitant changes in aspects of cognition and mood regulation. Current vaccines being used to prevent more serious effects of the COVID-19 and potential variants can stimulant the immune system to trigger similar cytokine storms in some individuals and can trigger neuroinflammatory effects on the brain. qEEG may have the ability to provide biomarkers for individuals who may have cytokine storms by any of number of challenges to the immune system.