Author: Alexander Bruni
Time for reading: ~3
minutes
Last Updated:
August 08, 2022
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But within healthful non-pregnant individuals, the parasite just sits there long-term, as a “potentially lifelong residen[t]” of your mind, stored at bay through your immune gadget “without any sizable scientific effect.” And so, “chronic toxoplasma infection has been considered as a benign condition”….until now.
Now these effects might not be “a direct result of the parasite,” however as a substitute pushed by using a persistent “low level [of] infection in the infected mind.” But, either manner…no longer appropriate.
So, permit’s explore this new statistics that’s gotten neurologists so worried, and overview strategies on how not to get infected within the first location, and what one is probably able to do to mediate the outcomes in case you are one of the one within four Americans that’s already infected. Suspicions that infections may play a position within intellectual fitness date returned extra than a century—as an instance, this editorial from 1896 asking whether or not madness might be due to a microbe.Well, “[f]or hundreds of thousands of years, parasites have altered the conduct in their hosts.” Take, for example, the “diabolical consequences of [the] rabies” virus, that's “generally transmitted [through] saliva.” So, it makes sense that the virus taps in particular into the limbic device of the brain, turning its victims from Fido into Cujo to facilitate “transmission of the virus.” But mind parasites can do extra than just transfer behaviors on and off.
“Some parasites can adaptively take over and completely control the behavior of their hosts,” like the well-known “zombie ants death” from an contamination with an “enslaver” fungus that steers “their insect hosts to die perched within [just the] function that favors the dispersal of [fungal] spores with the aid of the wind.” Here’s the head of a manipulated ant, colonized by means of tendrils of the fungus. “Ants infected via [this] fungus…die within a dramatic manner.” Once the ant is placed just proper, “death is preceded with the aid of biting behaviour wherein ants clamp [down] onto plant surfaces” to maintain it strong at the same time as the fungus bursts out of the lower back of the ant’s head and grows this long stalk.Here’s a graphic—how loopy is that?
There also are aquatic parasites which can purpose their insect hosts “to drown themselves,” or others which can “motive bees to bury themselves alive,” or motive spiders to construct unique webs.How creepy is that?
Okay, however come on, these are bugs with easy brains. Surely, brain parasites couldn’t have an effect on complex behaviors within higher animals…which brings us to toxoplasma.“Toxoplasma is understood to control the behavior of their hosts to increase the probability that the host is captured by using a predator.” For example, toxoplasma can reproduce in cats, but how is it going to get itself from the brain of an inflamed mouse into the cat?
What Does This All Have To Do With Human Mental Illness?