Altered functional brain network connectivity associated with symptoms
of post-traumatic stress in COVID-19 survivors, study shows

Date:
August 26, 2021
Source:
Georgia State University
Summary:
COVID-19 survivors report significantly higher symptoms of
post-traumatic stress, and these symptoms are associated with
changes to the brain's connectivity, according to a new study.



FULL STORY ========================================================================== COVID-19 survivors report significantly higher symptoms of post-traumatic stress, and these symptoms are associated with changes to the brain's connectivity, according to a study coauthored by Vince Calhoun,
Distinguished Professor of Psychology at Georgia State University and
director of the Center for Translational Research in Neuroimaging and
Data Science (TReNDS).


========================================================================== Although COVID-19 is primarily considered a respiratory disease, experts recognize it also affects the nervous system, sometimes causing severe neurological symptoms. Some COVID-19 survivors also experience long-term
mental health problems, including anxiety, depression and post-traumatic
stress disorder.

Few studies have examined functional abnormalities in the brain, which
might reveal the physiological processes that underlie prolonged mental
health symptoms in COVID-19 survivors.

In this paper, published in Neurobiology of Stress, the researchers set
out to determine whether survivors experience functional disruption of large-scale brain networks, collections of discrete and widespread regions
of the brain that work together to perform complex cognitive tasks. They collected functional MRI (fMRI) data and self-reported post-traumatic
stress symptoms from 50 COVID-19 survivors, along with matched control subjects. The COVID-19 survivors were discharged between February and
March 2020 from hospitals in Wuhan, China, and were tested about six
months after their discharge.

The findings showed COVID-19 survivors self-reported significantly
more symptoms of post-traumatic stress than the controls. The study
also revealed COVID-19 survivors exhibited abnormal patterns of brain connectivity over time, which were significantly associated with greater post-traumatic stress symptoms.

"Until recently," said Calhoun, a Georgia Research Alliance Eminent
Scholar, "analysis approaches used for fMRI data assumed that the
brain's functional connectivity was static. But we now have approaches
that can capture dynamic functional brain connectivity, showing the way
brain patterns change over time in fundamental and reoccurring ways."
The researchers identified three distinct, reoccurring states of
functional connectivity in the subjects' brains. The COVID-19 survivors
showed an increased occurrence of a particular state marked by patterns
of connections between brain networks involving sensorimotor functions
and visual networks.

"When we looked within the COVID-19 survivor group, we also found a
significant relationship between the severity of their post-traumatic
stress symptoms and how often their brain patterns are in that state,"
said Calhoun. "If they spend more time in that state, they tend to
have higher values on those symptom scales." "Our findings provide
evidence that COVID might affect transient brain dynamics rather than
its ongoing activity," said Zening Fu, the study's first author and a
research scientist at TReNDS.

The results highlight the importance of evaluating transient, time-varying functional network changes among COVID-19 survivors, although Calhoun
notes there are still many unanswered questions, including why this one
brain state is linked to post-traumatic stress. The research team is
also interested in replicating the study using other data and looking
at changes within subjects before and after contracting COVID-19.

========================================================================== Story Source: Materials provided by Georgia_State_University. Note:
Content may be edited for style and length.


========================================================================== Journal Reference:
1. Zening Fu, Yiheng Tu, Vince D. Calhoun, Yuqi Zhang, Qing Zhao,
Jun Chen,
Qingtao Meng, Zhijie Lu, Li Hu. Dynamic functional network
connectivity associated with post-traumatic stress symptoms in
COVID-19 survivors.

Neurobiology of Stress, 2021; 15: 100377 DOI:
10.1016/j.ynstr.2021.100377 ==========================================================================

Link to news story: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2021/08/210826130550.htm

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