4. Discussion
mood disturbances, anxiety, fatigue, pain, cognitive deficits, depression
LONG COVID
This study aimed at testing the effectiveness of an MBI in improving cognitive-related parameters in patients with long COVID after the SARS-CoV2 pandemic. The main findings of this study were that ten 30-min sessions of neuro-meditation using the RebalanceRegarding the effect of the intervention on the subjective reports, the findings were largely in line with our hypothesis. Patients receiving MBI showed significant decreases in physical and mental fatigue, muscle and joint pain, symptoms of depression and anxiety, and mood disturbances, and had significantly better improvements in sleep quality (increasing significantly by 3.4 points when compared with control long COVID patients). Moreover, the effect sizes were medium to large. To our best knowledge, this is the first randomized controlled trial to find immediate and positive psychological effects of MBI in COVID patients with long-term effects. Indeed, although the effectiveness of MBI on stress, anxiety, and well-being management has been extensively studied in recent years (for recent reviews and meta-analysis see [According to the Relative to cognitive functioning, the three main findings of the present study are that: (Longer RTs and impaired performances could be observed at baseline in all of the cognitive tasks performed by long COVID patients of the present study, in comparison to a group of healthy participants. Depending on the task requirements, this observation manifested either through a reduced score (Corsi block-tapping task), a greater deviation from a target (psychomotor task), or via slowest response times. Specifically, to the Long COVID patients related cognitive alteration can be numerically observed for each of the tasks performed. The fact that it did not systematically reach the level of statistical significance could be explained by the heterogeneity of the severity of the participants’ symptoms [The MBI proposed in the current protocol consisted of ten 30-min sessions of a RebalanceThe MBI sessions not only induced an “immediate” positive effect on cognitive performance, but also induced delayed benefits, with even higher cognitive performances at Post2 than at Post1. The continuous improvement on the three RT-based cognitive tasks is made explicit through an even higher response speed for maintained accuracy and is noteworthy in so far as no MBI sessions were performed for one week. While this duration appears insufficient to be discussed in terms of benefits retention, it is still an encouraging observation for mental health maintenance. Mechanisms behind the immediate versus delayed improvements are likely plural and could overlap. It has recently been shown that the RebalanceAltogether, the subjective and objective measures of mental health reported in this study are consistent with each other. It has been recently discussed that the subjective experience of cognitive deficits in this population may be considered predictive of the need for further objective, cognitive assessment [Some limitations of our study should be mentioned. Firstly, the absence of a group carrying out a classical meditation program does not allow us to isolate the sole effects of the present neuromodulation practice. While future studies should strive to dissociate classical vs. digital intervention-related cognitive benefits, it is noteworthy to mention that [