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
turn on when the power goes out.
And this is a real thing,
and explains why some people
can get to their eighties,
and still be very sharp while someone else
at 68 is having trouble
remembering important events.
The more robust your cognitive reserve,
the better you're able to function
when exposed to stressors like isolation,
environmental toxins, chronic stress,
or anything else that's damaging to the brain.
So you can think of cognitive reserve
as your brain's physiological resilience.
Here are five things that can increase
your cognitive reserve.
Education.
High levels of social interaction.
Cognitively challenging jobs.
Activities that engage your brain
like crossword puzzles.
Reading.
Learning a new language.
And learning to play an instrument.
And then regular physical exercise
because exercise stimulates nerve growth,
and nerve growth means
new pathways and connections.
I explain how that works in my video
on how exercise changes your brain.
Building up your cognitive reserve
is something you do over a lifetime.
It's not a one and done thing,
you have to continuously engage your mind.
An education doesn't mean
you have to go to Harvard or Oxford,
if you're in the UK.
It's not about the kind of degree you get.
It's about a commitment
to learning and processing new information.
When I was growing up without the internet,
the way that you gained knowledge
was to go to school
or go to the library,
and look things up in encyclopedias.
But now there is so much information
available online
that you can get a very advanced
level of education
from researching and reading
from trusted online sources.
If you want to learn a new language,
there's online courses for that.
Then there's even free YouTube videos
that can teach you a lot about
a lot of different things.
You just have to stay curious.
This list that I just gave you
isn't exhaustive.
Diet, sleep and self-care also factor in.
But the one thing I like about this list
is that most of the factors
are within your control.
You may not be able to control
how challenging your job is.
In fact, it may be a mind-numbing
struggle for you to get through it every day,
but you can compensate
for the hit that your brain takes
from that kind of job by exercising
before you go to work.
You can swing that schedule
or working on mind puzzles
during your lunch hour or when you get home.
And by the way, don't mistake a stressful job
for a mentally-challenging one.
Too much work with unrealistic deadlines
can make your work stressful,
but it doesn't mean it's mentally challenging
in a positive way.
Mentally-challenging work
should feel satisfying at some level
even if it's hard work.
Take a look at this video
on what exercise does to your brain.
Thanks for watching.
See you next time.