= to be talking and then suddenly forget what you were talking about.
Thought blocking is a neuropsychological symptom expressing a sudden and involuntary silence within a speech, and eventually an abrupt switch to another topic. Persons undergoing thought blocking may utter incomprehensible speech; they may also repeat words involuntarily or make up new words.
The most common cause of thought blocking is schizophrenia, but trauma, brain injuries, and some drugs may also induce thought blocking. Treatment usually requires medication to manage the symptoms of the underlying conditions, but people may also learn coping skills to help them focus on and manage their thoughts.
Intrusive thoughts are often triggered by stress or anxiety. They may also be a short-term problem brought on by biological factors, such as hormone shifts. For example, a woman might experience an uptick in intrusive thoughts after the birth of a child.
Brain fog is characterized by confusion, forgetfulness, and a lack of focus and mental clarity. This can be caused by overworking, lack of sleep, stress, and spending too much time on the computer.
Derailment: a sequence of completely unrelated thoughts with change of frame of reference between sentences. Thought blocking: sudden cessation of speech in the middle of a thought followed by silence.
Cognitive inhibition is the blocking out or tuning out of information that is irrelevant to the task or focus at hand. This mental process can be intentional or unintentional and can manifest itself in a variety of ways.
A single daydream usually lasts only a few minutes. And some people have only a few every day, while others are constantly lost in thought. Children and young people tend to daydream more than adults. Some daydreams are clear in our minds, replaying like a movie, while others are more vague.
The takeaway is that even though theres an intuitively appealing image of people with ADHD simply being distracted because they bounce from one idea to the next, its important to keep in mind that both mind wandering and blank thoughts are associated with ADHD.
[1] Tangentiality refers to a disturbance in the thought process that causes the individual to relate excessive or irrelevant detail that never reaches the essential point of a conversation or the desired answer to a question.
Tangentiality is the tendency to speak about topics unrelated to the main topic of discussion. While most people engage in tangentiality from time to time, constant and extreme tangentiality may indicate an underlying mental health condition, particularly schizophrenia.
Perseveration: excessive repetition of words, ideas, or subjects. Echolalia: speech repeats words or phrases of interviewer. Blocking: interruption of speech while ostensibly in pursuit of a goal. Stilted speech: odd language use that may be excessively formal, pompous, outdated, or quaint.
Also known as disorganized thinking, FTD results in disorganized speech and is recognized as a major feature of schizophrenia and other psychoses (including mood disorders, dementia, mania, and neurological diseases).
Identifying Thought Disorder
The Rorschach inkblot test: The Rorschach inkblot test is a projective test in which people are shown a series of ambiguous inkblots. Mental health professionals can then use a scoring system when interpreting verbal responses to the inkblots to look for signs of disordered thinking.
Everyone spaces out from time to time. While spacing out can simply be a sign that you are sleep deprived, stressed, or distracted, it can also be due to a transient ischemic attack, seizure, hypotension, hypoglycemia, migraine, transient global amnesia, fatigue, narcolepsy, or drug misuse.
Derealisation is where you feel the world around is unreal. People and things around you may seem "lifeless" or "foggy". You can have depersonalisation or derealisation, or both together. It may last only a few moments or come and go over many years.
Brain fog can occur in anyone with bipolar depression and is often characterized by symptoms like memory lapses, disorganization, groping for words, and difficulty learning new information. Bipolar brain fog can also be considered a form of memory loss that people with bipolar disorder experience regularly.