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Hi, I'm Dr. Tracey Marks, a psychiatrist and I make mental health education videos. It turns out our brains are wired for social interaction, and when we don't get it, the brain changes and you lose nerve connections in certain parts of the brain. Before COVID, this issue was more noticeable in older people who lived alone, cut off from their families, and maybe unable to drive. Researchers saw that the social isolation hastened the age-related cognitive decline, and was a risk for developing Alzheimer's disease. But with COVID and the ensuing lockdown, we see the evidence of these brain changes in younger people. You may experience it as brain fog. Brain fog can be a lot of things, but in general, you can think and process information slower. You can have trouble finding words. You can feel mentally tired and draggy, even though you haven't done anything that's physically tiring. Why would social isolation do this? Your brain is made up of a network of nerves that connect to one another. The tighter the connections between the nerves, the better they are able to transmit signals from one nerve to another. Inflammation loosens these connections as does social isolation. Social isolation affects your social cognition. Social cognition is a set of skills that include being able to read someone's emotional expression. Remembering and recognizing someone whose face is familiar to you. Being able to interpret someone's tone of voice, and being able to empathize with another person and appreciate that they have their own desires, goals, and intentions. This last skill is called theory of mind. Don't know why it's called that. It doesn't quite make sense to me, but that's just in case you read that in the articles that I have referenced. These skills are learned very early on, but we need social interaction to maintain them. So some aspect of isolation is that you lose these skills because you fall out of practice. But then there's the brain changes. In one of the studies that I referenced, researchers looked at structural MRI data from 32,000 people. That's a large study. The people who were socially isolated showed brain loss in the temporal lobes, frontal lobes and hippocampus. Your hippocampus is important for emotional memories among other functions, and I've said before that people who are depressed have smaller hippocampi. Now, if you've watched many of my videos, you probably know that I don't like presenting negative information without a silver lining and here it is. Even if you have brain loss from pandemic isolation, depression, long COVID or something else that causes brain damage, your brain has the ability to rewire itself, and strengthen loose connections. This ability is called neuroplasticity. So one solution to this problem of social isolation is to build up your cognitive reserve. Cognitive reserve is the mental buffer you have that lets your brain compensate and function even when you have reduced brain volume. It's like having a backup power generator...