UCLA Neurologist Says Word-Based Speed Drills, Not Sudoku, Help Fight Brain Fog

A UCLA neurologist says the popular advice to do crossword puzzles or number games to fight brain fog may be missing the point for many people, particularly those experiencing memory lapses tied to hormonal changes.

Dr. Rhonda Voskuhl, a professor of neurology at UCLA and co-founder of Cleopatra RX in Los Angeles, told Fox News Digital at the Livelong Women’s Health Summit in New York City in September that brain exercises only work when they target the specific mental function that has slowed down.

“You can’t just do random cognitive exercises,” Voskuhl said. “They’ve got to fit the problem.”

According to Voskuhl, the problem for many people experiencing brain fog is verbal memory, not logic or math. “Doing math is not going to help … You need an exercise that will help you with words,” she said.

Hormones and the Brain

Voskuhl said brain fog, especially the kind brought on by midlife hormone shifts during perimenopause and menopause, affects very specific parts of the brain rather than overall intelligence. Overall reasoning and logic stay normal, she said, but two functions take a hit: verbal memory, meaning the ability to recall names and words, and processing speed, meaning the ability to think quickly under pressure.

Because of that, puzzles like Sudoku and other number-based games, which largely exercise math and logic skills, may do little to help with word-recall struggles, according to Voskuhl.

“It’s not a global problem with the brain,” she said. “It’s not global brain atrophy, but there are some regions on MRIs and research studies that show that the hippocampus, the memory area, will have some atrophies, some functional connection issues.”

Retrieval, Not Loss

Voskuhl said it helps to understand that brain fog typically affects retrieval rather than storage of information. The word or name a person is searching for is still there in memory, she said, but the brain’s retrieval process is simply running slower than usual.

To address that, Voskuhl said exercises need to do two things: prompt active word-finding and force quick responses.

“It’s basically processing speed,” she said. “So you need an exercise that is going to be something that makes you rush, makes you do it quickly.”

Finding the Right Exercise

Rather than downloading a generic brain-training app, Voskuhl recommends paying attention to where lapses actually occur in daily life and choosing exercises that match those specific weak spots.

People “know themselves,” she said, including “what they are bad at or what they used to be good at and now they’re not as good at.” Once someone identifies that, she said, they should think about which games to try. “You can play around with different games. You can see if it pushes you.”