Denno Peter, Zhao Sijia, Husain Masud, Hampshire Adam
Department of Brain Sciences, Imperial College London, London W12 0NN, UK; Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology, and Neuroscience, Kings College London, London WC2R 2LS, UK.
Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Oxford, Oxford OX2 6GG, UK.
Trends Neurosci. 2025 May;48(5):330-348. doi: 10.1016/j.tins.2025.01.003. Epub 2025 Feb 25.
'Brain fog' is commonly reported in more than a dozen chronic diseases, but what is it? We review research across conditions which has characterised brain fog and evaluate its definitions and objective correlates. Brain fog has been used to refer to a variable set of overlapping symptoms implicating cognition, fatigue, and affect. It has been defined as a distinct symptom, a syndrome, or a nonspecific term. We consider the evidence that brain fog is a transdiagnostic entity with a common phenomenology and profile of objective cognitive deficits. We discuss where these commonalities arise and argue that linguistic ambiguity, shared cognitive impairments, and noncognitive factors are more likely than shared neurobiology. We suggest how future research might apply existing tools to disambiguate the phenomena that brain fog conflates.
“脑雾”常见于十几种慢性疾病中，但它究竟是什么呢？我们回顾了针对各种病症展开的、对脑雾进行了特征描述的研究，并评估了其定义及客观相关因素。脑雾一直被用来指代一系列相互重叠的可变症状，涉及认知、疲劳和情感等方面。它被定义为一种独特的症状、一种综合征或一个非特异性术语。我们考量了脑雾是一种具有共同现象学及客观认知缺陷特征的跨诊断实体的证据。我们探讨了这些共性的来源，并认为语言模糊性、共同的认知障碍及非认知因素比共同的神经生物学因素更有可能导致脑雾。我们还提出了未来研究如何运用现有工具来厘清脑雾所混淆的各种现象。
