Neuroimaging study finds wearing a COVID mask does not affect brain activity during cognitive tasks
The COVID-19 infections started in late 2019 and the World Health Organization (WHO) declared a global pandemic already in March 2020. One of the most prominent recommendations to curb the spread of the virus was to wear a face mask in situations of person-to-person contact. This sparked a heated debate around the world. Concerns were voiced that masks are uncomfortable, inconvenient, and interfere with daily living activities. Claims were made that they made breathing harder.
Masks were declared mandatory during medical procedures, including magnetic resonance imaging. Researchers examined effects of wearing N95 face masks on respiration and found a 3% increase in resistance during inhalation. Masks indeed make breathing a bit harder, but researchers concluded that this increase was too small to be of significance for the breathing process. This is also relevant for several brain scientists, especially since many research institutes require participants to wear a mask during fMRI experiments to adhere to the COVID regulations and researchers wonder whether it can affect brain activations.
A study compared magnetic resonance images of brains of 35 undergraduate students and found that imaging results were the same regardless of whether the students wore a face mask during the imaging processes or not. The study was published in Communications Biology. The results indicate that wearing a face mask does not affect results off magnetic resonance imaging at rest and that it also has no effect on the execution of the studied cognitive tasks by the brain. Klugah-Brown said the study has two primary findings: “First, we did not find significant differences in brain activity or performance between wearing a mask and not wearing one. Second, in line with general recommendations thus wearing a standard surgical mask to contain the spread of the virus from person to person is a safe approach.”
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