That Neuroscience Guy - The Neuroscience of Brain Fog

Episode Date: November 2, 2023

Its not uncommon for long periods of effort and/or stress to impact our brain, leaving us thinking less clearly and at a much slower rate. In Today's episode of That Neuroscience Guy, we discuss the neuroscience behind brain fog. 

Hi, my name is Olof Kregolsen, and I'm a neuroscientist at the University of Victoria. And in my spare time, I'm that neuroscience guy. Welcome to the podcast. You know, I think we've all experienced brain fog. It's that state where our brains feel sluggish and things that are normally clear are not that clear. It can even seem like it's hard to think. The pandemic definitely increased the levels of brain fog that people experience, but it can happen every day for a number of reasons. So on today's podcast, the neuroscience of brain fog. So on today's podcast, the neuroscience of brain fog. Brain fog isn't a medical condition.

It's a term used for certain symptoms that can affect your ability to think. You can feel confused or disorganized, or you can find it hard to focus and put your thoughts into words. There's certain symptoms that come to mind with brain fog, and perhaps the first is brain fog, the clouding of consciousness It basically is referring to having a reduced ability to perceive things or understand things You find it difficult to think clearly So someone might be saying something and you hear the words but you just can't really understand what they're saying. It just doesn't make sense to you, even though you kind of know it should.

And when you're thinking about things, your thoughts aren't sharp. It's kind of like everything's a little bit fuzzy and you start to feel dissociated or distanced from reality and life. And you sort of have trouble interacting with the world. It's like you're moving around in a fog. I know for me, when I've experienced brain fog, it's kind of like I'm walking in a swimming pool full of jello, if you get what I mean. It's like there's this sort of just resistance to moving forward or thinking, I guess, when we're talking about brain fog. thinking, I guess, when we're talking about brain fog. Another symptom of brain fog is fatigue. You basically feel really tired. That sort of overwhelming sense of exhaustion where it's just hard to do things. Now, physically, you might feel this, but we're talking about your brain as

well. It's almost like it's just you're thinking, you think to yourself, you know, I really need to concentrate on this. And it just seems like a lot of effort. And when you really get into brain fog on a multi-day sort of basis, it doesn't matter how much you sleep. You wake up and you feel exhausted. But it can lead to other symptoms, right? It ruins your concentration, but it also can lead to irritability. You know, you're more likely to get angry. You can feel lonely. You feel forgetful because you're tired, and depression is a common symptom of people

that are experiencing brain fog. Another symptom of brain fog is confusion. When you're confused, you have a hard time focusing and you're making decisions, and you just feel a bit disoriented or lost, right? You have trouble turning your thoughts into words. And some of the extreme signs that can happen is you might slur your words a little bit because you're literally, the motor system's having trouble, you know, voicing what you want to talk about. You pause for a long time in the middle of a sentence or, you know, you're talking to someone and you just pause because it's like you literally have to concentrate on what you want to say next. You say words that don't make sense, all right, or sentences that don't make sense.

It's like a bunch of words come out or a word comes out and it just doesn't fit in with the rest of the conversation. Your sense of sort of purpose or direction can be missing. It's like, you know, what am I supposed to be doing now? And you sort of pause. And I know when I was experiencing brain fog, you know, one time during the pandemic, I remember standing in the middle of my living room and I was trying to figure out where I was going in the house. I was just like literally going, okay, what am I doing next? You lose sort of track of time when you're experiencing brain fog. It's like you look at your watch and an hour has gone by and you're like, what? Where did that hour go? Emotional swings, I've already mentioned, that's another symptom of brain fog. And like

I've said a few times, you lose your train of thought. It's like you sort of forget what you're supposed to be thinking about. I've mentioned this a few times, but another symptom that's out there and one that people like to really emphasize is just a lack of focus. You can't direct your attention to something. So you're, you know, you're, you're staring at your laptop, you're supposed to be working and your attention is just elsewhere. It's wandering around the room. So this lack of focus, difficulty concentrating is another symptom of brain fog. You basically just can't, you know, it's tied to focus. Focus is more of an attention thing. So we're talking about the parietal cortex and our attentional system. The concentration is more the prefrontal cortex. You just can't get the prefrontal cortex on task and you're not able

to process the information that you want to process to do things. And again, I've mentioned it a few times, but forgetfulness is a common symptom of brain fog. So if you experience these symptoms, to summarize, clouding of consciousness, fatigue, confusion, lack of focus, difficulty concentrating, and forgetfulness. These are the classic symptoms of brain fog. Now, what can cause brain fog? One of the most common causes of brain fog is overworking. If you push yourself too hard for too long, your brain just slowly starts to experience brain fog. It's just you've hit your limits.

Just like if you push yourself too hard physically, your body sort of slows down, your brain Just like if you push yourself too hard physically, your body sort of slows down, your brain slows down if you push yourself too hard. So overworking is a common cause of brain fog. Pregnancy, funnily enough, women that experience pregnancy can get brain fog. And we'll talk about why that is, but in a bit we'll get into the neuroscience of it. But pregnancy is a cause. Certain neurodegenerative diseases, multiple sclerosis

for one, can lead to brain fog. Medications, some medications, whether they're over-the-counter or prescribed, and some medical treatments can cause brain fog. Menopause, women experiencing menopause can experience brain fog. Chronic fatigue syndrome, if you're perpetually tired. brain fog. Chronic fatigue syndrome, if you're perpetually tired. Depression can lead to brain fog. Stress and anxiety is a common cause of brain fog. If you're overstressed, you can experience brain fog. And these are some of the common causes of brain fog. So we've talked about symptoms and what it is. We've talked about causes. But what's going on in the brain? What is actually causing brain fog? Well, it turns out it's all about hormones and neurotransmitters. So just as a bit of review, what is a hormone? Hormones are basically chemicals that are released, right? And they

coordinate functions in your body and they carry messages through the blood to your organs, to the skin, to muscles and other tissue. And basically, this is the way your brain signals your body what to do. There's tons of different hormones. There's currently over 50 or 60 that have been identified. And some of the things that they do, just to give you some ideas, like metabolism, it's controlled by hormone release. Homeostasis, blood pressure, blood sugar regulation, fluid levels, electrolyte balance, body temperature, that's all controlled through hormone release. Growth and development, obviously

we know is triggered through hormones. Sexual function and reproduction is controlled through hormone release. Our sleep-wake cycle, melatonin, rightin is a hormone and it's controlled by the sleep-wake cycle. And our moods are controlled through hormones. So one of the causes of brain fog is abnormalities in hormone release. So those things that cause brain fog, if we took depression or stress or anxiety, for instance, which is stuff that we experienced during the COVID pandemic, this basically resulted in our hormones being released in an irregular fashion. And that irregular hormone release led or leads to brain fog. Now, it doesn't always, but it can. Now, hormone release is only half the battle. So hormone imbalances can cause brain fog, but also it's neurotransmitters.

So what are neurotransmitters? We've talked about them in the past, but basically neurotransmitters are things like serotonin, norepinephrine, dopamine, glutamate. And if you think about what neurotransmitters do, they're part of neural communication. So we've talked about this in the past, but basically when a neuron communicates, an electrical signal is generated that we call an action potential. It's set down the axon of the neuron. And when it gets to the end of the axon, a place called the bouton, neurotransmitter is released. And that release of neurotransmitter is how a neuron communicates with another neuron.

So neurotransmitter is released and it crosses the synaptic gap and it binds on another neuron at the dendrite. And that binding generates an electrical signal we call an excitatory or inhibitory postsynaptic potential. And then another neuron fires. And if you remember, the brain is basically just a bunch of neurons, right? Now there's glial cells and other things, but in terms of thinking and everything that you're processing and controlling movements and sensation, it's all just neurons firing. And neurotransmitters are a key part of that communication process.

So basically brain frog occurs when hormones and neurotransmitters are disrupted and they're not being released appropriately. So you've either got too much or too little. So too many hormones, too few hormones, too much neurotransmitter, too little neurotransmitter, or it's variable. Your hormone and neurotransmitter release isn't sort of constant where you want it to be, but it's up and down. And all of these things can lead to what we experience as brain fog. So within the brain, hormone imbalances, neurotransmitter imbalances, brain fog, and all of those symptoms that we talked about at the start. If this happens, you get the clouding of consciousness, fatigue, confusion, lack of focus, difficulty concentrating, and forgetfulness. So because of

this imbalance in hormone release, this imbalance in neurotransmitters, brain fog. Now what can you do about it? Well, reality is you have to restore homeostasis. You have to get your body back to normal. And of course, I should rename the podcast, the Sleep Diet Exercise Podcast. But the reality is these are three things that you can do that really impact your hormone levels and neurotransmitter levels. So when you sleep, your body returns to homeostasis. All right. So sleep will help restore the proper level of hormones and neurotransmitters. So sleep will help restore the proper level of hormones and neurotransmitters. Diet.

You know, if you are experiencing brain fog, you want to be on a healthy diet. It's definitely not the time to switch to junk food, all right, or alcohol or things like this, because you want your diet to be on point, and that will help your body return to homeostasis. It'll get those hormone levels and neurotransmitter levels back to normal. And then exercise. Exercise, you know, if you get the blood flowing all right, you get oxygen through the body. That also helps you return to homeostasis and those hormone levels and neurotransmitter levels will come back to normal. So there you go. A bunch about brain fog. Hopefully you found that interesting and useful. And of course, the tips that I always give are sleep, diet, and exercise. Get those things sorted. And you will hopefully remove any brain fog that you're experiencing. You can have links. Don't forget the website, thatneuroscienceguy.com.

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Please send us ideas. We're always looking for ideas. This episode today, again, came from you, the listeners. We want to know what you want to know about the neuroscience of daily life. And of course, thank you so much for listening to the podcast and please subscribe. My name is Olof Kregolsen and I'm that neuroscience guy. I'll be back to you soon with another neuroscience bite.