Neuroscientist: Covid Brain Is a Real Thing. Here’s How to Deal With It

Neuroscientist: Covid Brain Is a Real Thing. Here’s How to Deal With It

Deciding when and how to pivot your business may be the difference between bankruptcy and survival. Putting that mask on, or not , could could keep you or someone you love out of the hospital. With stakes so high, you'd think that evolution would have pushed our brains to be sharper about making decisions during a crisis. But for most of us the pandemic hasn't left us feeling any smarter .

On the contrary, many people are feeling fuzzy headed and emotionally fragile at the moment. Frantically trying to figure out how to keep our heads above water despite the huge changes in our lives is one obvious reason for that. But according to INSEAD neuroscientist Hilke Plassmann the trouble goes deeper.

You're not just sleep deprived and stressed, you're experiencing the effects of very real brain changes brought on by the trauma and uncertainty of the pandemic. In a recent INSEAD Knowledge article written together with her INSEAD colleague Benjamin Kessler, she dubs the phenomenon "COVID brain" and explains its physiological roots:

In times like these, our brains tend to work differently. The prefrontal cortex, the area of the brain responsible for complex planning, working memory and analytical thinking, is swamped with ambiguous signals, impacting