Effects of wearing a Covid face mask on your brain trends now
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Wearing a face mask can substantially reduce your ability to make quality decisions in some situations, according to a new study, because they can be a distraction.
University of Queensland researcher Dr David Smerdon wanted to know how the most visible tool used to suppress COVID-19 affects human thinking, so he studied the moves of more than 8,000 chess players in 19 countries before and during the pandemic to find out.
Overall, he found that wearing a face mask substantially reduces the quality of a player's moves.
'Masks substantially reduced the average quality of cognitive decisions,' said the study, published US journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences on Tuesday.
Researchers found wearing a face mask substantially reduces the quality of a player's moves during a high stakes game of chess (pictured, Brisbane)
'However, the negative effect is short-lived and primarily operates on elite players and in
