Insomnia symptoms and behavioral performance in hospitalized COVID-19 patients and healthy controls

In this study we investigated associations between insomnia symptoms and behavioral performance in hospitalized COVID-19 patients and healthy controls. Participants completed a Go/No-Go (GNG) task assessing response inhibition and related attentional processes, and an Operation Sign Spatial Association (OSSA) task assessing spatial-compatibility effects during arithmetic processing. Insomnia symptoms were measured using the Insomnia Severity Index (ISI). GNG reaction times and omission errors did not significantly differ as a function of group or ISI. In contrast, No-Go commission errors differed as a function of ISI between groups, with higher insomnia symptom severity associated with increased commission errors in patients but not in controls. In the OSSA task, patients showed slower overall responses than controls, while the interaction between operation and response side confirmed the OSSA effect across participants. The magnitude of the OSSA effect was also modulated by ISI, but this association did not differ between groups. Exploratory analyses revealed no association between the OSSA effect and GNG performance. The findings indicate that insomnia symptoms are differentially associated with response inhibition in hospitalized COVID-19 patients and healthy controls, whereas spatial-compatibility effects during arithmetic processing appear to be modulated by insomnia symptoms similarly across groups. Further research is needed to clarify the factors contributing to these behavioral differences following COVID-19 and hospitalization.