When you think of brain fog, what comes to mind? Perhaps those moments when you can’t put together a sentence or you lose your train of thought. Or maybe it’s a general malaise, a lack of focus. If you can’t put your finger on exactly what it is, you have company. Brain fog is perplexing, even to those in medicine – and it’s unique to each person who suffers from it. The issue is increasingly common – as many as one in four people who once contracted Covid-19 may develop brain fog, per a study in the journal Cell – yet there’s no single definition of it at the moment. (The term is colloquial, not scientific; experts label it cognitive impairment.) But Covid-related brain fog tends to affect attention, memory and executive function. These first two are pretty self-explanatory. Dr Jacqueline H. Becker, a clinical neuropsychologist at Mount Sinai Health System, describes executive function as the CEO of the brain. It oversees the other tasks and helps with more difficult ones, such as organising info, making plans and solving problems.
These actions are all regulated by the frontal lobe, the processing centre of the brain, which is – evolutionarily speaking – a larger, newer region that develops only in humans and is responsible for our more advanced cognitive abilities. It is the last brain network to develop (it doesn’t fully mature until you’re 25 years old!), and it remains fluid and vulnerable to change throughout your life, says Dr Erica Cotton, a neuropsychologist at Northwestern Memorial Hospital.
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