ArticleBrain communications2026
Dynamic multivariate patterns of brain structure-neuropsychiatric symptom associations in long COVID.
Article in Brain communications, 2026. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Not yet cited in PubMed.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
0 citing papers in PubMed.
No citing paper in PubMed yet.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
13 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Long COVID presents with heterogeneous and persistent neuropsychiatric symptoms, suggesting possible shared neural underpinnings. However, the dynamic brain structure-symptom relationships and their potential for predicting long-term outcomes remain unclear. We conducted a longitudinal study of 144 individuals with long COVID (mean age: 37.8 ± 10.1 years, 48.6% male). All participants experienced mild COVID-19 and were not hospitalized. Structural MRI and comprehensive psychiatric and cognitive assessments were performed at 1, 2 and 12 months post-infection. A cohort of 68 healthy controls (mean age: 36.0 ± 10.3 years; 41.2% male) completed the same assessment protocol at baseline. Regularized canonical correlation analysis was employed to identify multivariate associations between 13 psychiatric and cognitive measures and both grey matter volume and cortical thickness, and to assess whether early structural features predicted symptom outcomes at 1 year. Neuropsychiatric symptoms were linked to coordinated structural covariance patterns across distributed brain regions in long COVID; these associations strengthened from 1 to 3 months post-infection and were absent in controls. A stable cognitive-affective symptom dimension showed the strongest brain-behaviour coupling. Notably, the neural substrates of this coupling diverged over time: grey matter volume associations remained localized to prefrontal-limbic circuits, whereas cortical thickness associations expanded to frontoparietal regions. Critically, reduced grey matter volume in the right cuneus and superior frontal gyri, along with decreased cortical thickness in the left supramarginal gyrus at 3 months post-infection, were significantly linked to poorer executive function and greater fatigue 1 year later. Our findings delineate evolving neuroanatomical signature of long COVID, where distinct patterns of grey matter volume and cortical thickness underpin a core symptom profile and predict long-term neuropsychiatric symptoms. These results provide insight into the neural mechanisms of long COVID and identify specific targets for monitoring and early intervention.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What Socratic holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the Socratic graph.