Untangling the Brain Fog
This artwork is created in collaboration between the artist Stella Ampatzi and the scientist Mara Kuvaldina, PhD, a neuropsychologist at Columbia University, whose research focuses on cognitive symptoms commonly described as brain fog in Lyme disease and other infection associated chronic illnesses. Her work explores how these symptoms affect daily functioning and investigates brain-stimulation techniques to better understand and improve them. She helps lead research and clinical trials through the Lyme and Tick-Borne Diseases Research Center at Columbia University.
https://www.columbiapsychiatry.org/profile/mara-kuvaldina-phd
The work is also informed by broader scientific efforts, including a national clinical trials network for Lyme and other tick-borne diseases, established to advance research into potential treatments. This network supports early-stage studies, assists with clinical trial design, coordinates a national patient registry, and manages data for multisite research. With multiple treatment studies currently enrolling and more in development, it provides patients with opportunities to participate in research that may inform future care.
Founded in 2007, the Lyme and Tick-Borne Diseases Research Center at Columbia University brings together leading scientists and clinicians to study long-lasting Lyme disease and related illnesses/conditions that are often overlooked or misunderstood in research. A central focus of this work is understanding persistent cognitive symptoms, including brain fog, with the goal of improving recognition, knowledge, and treatment.
Untangling the Brain Fog exists at the intersection of lived experience and clinical science giving visual form to an invisible battle, honoring those who endure it, and amplifying the research working to make these conditions seen, understood, and treated.
https://www.columbia-lyme.org/
The Concept:
Living with Brain Fog creates a profound sense of isolation and smallness. There is no control over what is happening inside the body, and that loss of control makes the fight feel deeply uneven. It is an invisible, internal battle, one that friends and family cannot see and often cannot fully understand. The conflict lives within, turning the body into unfamiliar and hostile terrain.
It can feel as though the body is against you.
The strong version of yourself, the one you once relied on slowly disappears, leaving behind a vast, aching void. The brain becomes alien. Once familiar and dependable, it now feels distant, estranged, and unrecognizable, alienating you from daily life and from who you once were.
Every day, you face the challenge of untangling the strings that once led to your old self.
Is she still there? Perhaps at the end of this unraveling, you won’t find who you were but instead, someone better: more resilient, more grounded, and stronger than you ever imagined.
And still, every day, you wake up and confront the unknown. You stand in front of it again and again. This is a battle that never announces itself, never pauses, yet demands to be faced daily.
Life begins to feel like a video game designed without fairness. You watch others move forward equipped with extra tools and weapons the upgrades, the power boosts, the laser guns while you are handed a stick and a rock. The challenges are the same, but the equipment is not. And yet, you keep playing.
Strength is redefined here. It is not measured by advantage or ease, but by endurance. To continue fighting an invisible battle every single day, to stand in front of the unknown without armor, to keep showing up despite being dealt the weakest hand—this is not weakness. This is resilience and strength at its purest.
I see you.
I applaud you.
