unhide® Project: Brain Fog Study
In partnership with Dr. Mara Kuvaldina, PhD of Columbia University, the Brain Inflammation Collaborative has launched the Brain Fog Study. This study aims to better understand “brain fog”—a common, but not well-defined symptom, that describes problems with thinking, memory, and concentration that many people experience, especially those living with chronic or post-infectious illnesses such as autoimmune diseases, Long COVID, ME/CFS, and Lyme disease.
To better understand this symptom, we’ve designed a new survey—the Brain Fog Questionnaire (BFQ)—which is now live on The unhide® Platform!
Research Study Goal
Our goal is to understand how people of all ages experience brain fog in daily life—including its impact on learning, work, and overall quality of life.
Because children and teens often describe symptoms differently than adults, their perspectives are especially valuable. These experiences are sometimes overlooked in research, and capturing them is essential to fully understanding brain fog across the lifespan.
The insights gathered will help guide the development of more targeted studies—including those exploring contributing factors of brain fog, potential treatments and their impact on cognitive health, and how brain fog might be better defined, recognized, and ultimately considered in diagnostic protocols for different age groups.
Collaborating Researcher
Mara Kuvaldina, PhD, is an Assistant Professor of Medical Psychology and Psychiatry at CUIMC and a Neuropsychologist and Researcher in the Lyme and Tick-Borne Diseases Research Center. She is also Associate Director of the Clinical Trials Network (CTN) for Lyme and other Tick-Borne Diseases. She completed her postdoctoral training at the Department of Physics, University of Helsinki, and was a Fulbright scholar at the New School for Social Research. Her current research focus is neuromodulation (vagus nerve stimulation, transcranial magnetic stimulation, and transcranial direct current stimulation) for chronic inflammatory illnesses and tick-borne diseases. She combines methods of experimental cognitive psychology, applied physics, and psychometry to investigate potential biomarkers and develop an individualized neuromodulation regimen.
What Do We Ask?
The Brain Fog Questionnaire has detailed, straightforward instructions and includes:
- Simple questions about your own experience
- Multiple-choice questions about how brain fog impacts your daily activities
- A brain fog “word cloud”—a fun, easy section where you can choose how well different descriptive words or phrases apply to your experiences of brain fog.
- Multiple choice and written questions about what else influences or triggers your brain fog.
The questionnaire takes around 20 minutes to complete and can be done on a computer or mobile device. If you’re busy or get tired, you can save your progress and return to it later.
Who Can Join?
Anyone who is eligible to join unhide® and is 7 years of age or older can take part. Participants under 18 will need a parent or legal guardian to assist with consent and survey completion.
Everyone is welcome — whether or not you’ve experienced brain fog yourself. Comparing different perspectives helps researchers better understand what brain fog truly is.
How Can I Help?
By sharing your experiences through the BFQ, you can help researchers uncover how brain fog develops, what influences it, and how it can be treated. Even if you haven’t experienced brain fog before, or aren’t sure if you have, you can still take the survey. Understanding how people with and without brain fog think and feel gives researchers more clarity into what brain fog actually is.
- Sign up or log in to the unhide® Platform.
- The Brain Fog Questionnaire (BFQ) will appear under the “Surveys” section of your dashboard.
- Take the BFQ at your own pace. It will take about 20 minutes to complete. You can pause and return to finish it at any time.
What's In It For Me?
By taking part, you’ll:
- Contribute directly to research that could improve understanding, diagnosis, and treatment of brain fog.
- Help shape the future of care for people with chronic and infection-associated illnesses.
- Receive an optional summary of study findings once data collection and analysis are complete.
Help Us Spread The Word
The more people who take part, the stronger our findings will be.
Please consider sharing this study with friends, family, or online communities who may be affected by brain fog or chronic conditions.
Together, we can bring visibility, understanding, and solutions to this often-overlooked symptom.
To learn more about the Brain Fog Questionnaire, check out our blog or sign up for the platform.
