RECOVER-NEURO clinical trial shares results of three non-drug treatments for cognitive symptoms of Long COVID

A 328-person federally funded trial tested brain training, cognitive rehabilitation, and brain stimulation for long COVID brain fog, and found none of them worked.

The NIH-funded RECOVER-NEURO trial enrolled 328 participants across 22 U.S. sites between August 2023 and December 2024 to test three non-drug approaches to the cognitive symptoms of long COVID: brain training software (BrainHQ), cognitive rehabilitation (PASC-CoRE), and transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS). Results were published in JAMA Neurology.

None of the three proved effective. All five study groups, including the comparison groups, showed modest improvement with no meaningful separation between them.

The trial used a decentralized design so participants could complete most activities from home, which matters for a population where fatigue and brain fog make travel to study sites difficult. The negative result narrows the field of plausible treatments for cognitive long COVID.