![]() (Really, this is the one time it’s acceptable and helpful!) Checking how you do with certain cognitive tasks provides a real-life benchmark. What You Need To Know About COVID TestingĪnother way to test yourself: Compare against others.Perhaps you are in your late 30s and have been in the work world awhile, yet you’re struggling with going back after a viral infection because you just don’t feel like yourself anymore. Maybe you were a straight-A student before, and now you have to work extra hard to get the same grades. The main criterion to consider is whether you’re having difficulty returning to a baseline level of functioning, says Becker. Okay, how do you know if you actually have brain fog? When that internal fire rages (from, say, chemo), it impedes your brain’s ability to communicate with the rest of your bod, according to recent research in Cell. The assumed culprit behind all the probs? The enemy within, so to speak: inflammation. ![]() ![]() “But now, with long COVID, we’re seeing a lot more people impacted.” “Even though we’ve known that people can develop chronic cognitive symptoms from other diseases, it was relatively rare,” says Gina Perez-Giraldo, MD, a neurologist at Northwestern Memorial. Plus, brain fog is a term patients use to refer to cognitive difficulties that can also be associated with central nervous system disorders like multiple sclerosis, medications like topiramate, and treatments such as chemotherapy. ![]() The frontal lobe doesn’t work smoothly when we’re in pain, overwhelmed, or sick. That’s a frontal lobe issue,” says Cotton. “At the end of a long day, when we get home, and we’ve been doing a million different things, we’re tired, hungry, and can’t think as well. 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 Erica Cotton, PsyD, a neuropsychologist at Northwestern Memorial Hospital.Įven people who don’t think they deal with fogginess know what not-so-great frontal lobe functioning feels like. The cognitive functions affected by brain fog are all regulated by the frontal lobe, the processing center 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. So, what's actually happening in your brain when you have brain fog? Gina Perez-Giraldo is a neurologist at Northwestern Memorial. Erica Cotton is a neuropsychologist at Northwestern Memorial Hospital. Becker is a clinical neuropsychologist at Mount Sinai Health System. Play icon The triangle icon that indicates to play It oversees the other tasks and helps with more difficult ones, such as organizing info, making plans, and solving problems. Becker, PhD, a clinical neuropsychologist at Mount Sinai Health System, describes executive function as the CEO of the brain. These first two are pretty self-explanatory. Yep, brain fog is perplexing, even to those in medicine, and it’s unique to each person who suffers from it.ĬOVID-related brain fog tends to affect attention, memory, and executive function. Or maybe it’s a general malaise, a lack of focus. When you picture what brain fog looks like, you may think of those moments when you can’t put together a sentence or you lose your train of thought. (The term is colloquial, not scientific, BTW experts label it cognitive impairment.) The issue is increasingly common-as many as one in four people who contract COVID-19 may develop brain fog, per a study in the journal Cell-yet there’s no single definition of it at the moment. If you've found yourself wondering, What is brain fog? you're not alone.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |