Findings from the Italian survey for monitoring the state of the art of advanced neuroscientific research post COVID-19

Objective: This project was devised for evaluating and highlighting the impact of COVID-19 on the management of basic and clinical research activities conducted by the Italian laboratories of neuroscience, neurophysiology, and clinical neuropsychology during the pandemic and post-emergency phases. Participants and Methods: A total of 254 laboratories/units have been mapped on the Italian territory and clustered based on location, primary research field, and category of institution. A survey was designed including five different sections: i) consensus and introduction; ii) general data con the institution and the respondent and pre-pandemic phase; iii) research activity during Phase 1 – first lockdown (from February to May 2020); iv) research activity during Phase 2 – second lockdown (October 2020 to May 2021); and v) summary evaluations of the pandemic period (overall considerations regarding both Phase 1 and Phase 2). The survey was implemented on the Qualtrics XM platform and sent to the mapped centers and disseminated through the main Italian neuropsychological scientific societies. Results: Focusing on the sample of survey respondents, which almost equally represented primarily healthcare/clinical research professionals (53%) and primarily basic research professionals (47%), it is relevant to note that just about one-fourth of them reported the existence of emergency management guidelines to help strategic decision-making and inform the rearrangement of lab/unit activities in case of a disease outbreak, a percentage that has grown up to 94% after the COVID-19 emergency. This led to a closure rate equal to 92% for purely research laboratories/units during Phase 1, compared to 52% of mixed clinical and research units and 60% of primarily clinical units. A similar –though more restrained– scenario was observed even in Phase 2, with 44% of purely research units still closed, vs. 5% of mixed units and 10% or primarily clinical ones. Another impactful observation emerging from the survey is that, while the number of submitted research articles during phase1 and 2 was almost comparable to a previous reference period (year 2019), the investigated research and clinical institutions reported a remarkable decrease of 23% for planned and submitted projects, a percentage that reaches -40% in mixed clinical-research units. Conclusions: We suggest that such loss of research projects in the field of basic, clinical, and applied neurosciences, of their potential outcomes in terms of novel theoretical models and technological/methodological progress, as well as of potential by-side discoveries might show its potentially detrimental effects in the next few years. Defining guidelines and new best practices for efficient and sustainable management of these necessary activities in the short and long term is a current critical challenge and might help containing the cost of their interruption on healthcare for the population and on individual/social well-being.