This may seem like a sci-fi story, but it’s not: viruses can alter our behavior to make it easier to spread viral particles to reach new guests, this can happen in different ways.
Can viruses control our behavior? A lot of people have asked the question at some point and probably also thought it was a sci-fi movie or even a horror movie.
- However.
- Science is used to researching very complex issues and has discovered that this can actually happen.
- Viruses can change our actions.
- Which means they can control our behavior.
However, this does not happen directly. The virus does not take credit for your will and does not make decisions for you, in fact it does so in a more cunning, silent and curious way, because if anything these infectious microscopic beings want above all is to survive. , reproduce and be part of complex ecosystems.
Therefore, one way to achieve this goal is to change the behavior of the host in which the virus is housed to spread viral particles on its own, for example, most of the symptoms we experience when we have flu, diarrhea or even a simple cold is meant to transmit the infection to other healthy people.
Sneezing, for example, is more than a natural mechanism to expel invaders from our body, it is also a means by which the virus spreads, allowing it to pass from one organism to another effectively and, as we well know, it works. However, there is even more fascinating and disturbing data on the subject.
The word virus alone frightens us, and more so in the current context marked by COVID-19, as they say, our worst enemies are precisely those we cannot see, those that are only visible under the microscope and have the power to affect. our health.
However, what do these beings really look like? In reality, they are nothing more than packets of genetic information, small containers made from a protein capsule.
Its sole purpose is to enter the cells of other organisms to survive and multiply, not only infect humans, but also other animals, plants, fungi and even bacteria.
So when we face the question of how viruses can control our behavior, the first thing we need to understand about them is that they are smarter beings than we usually think.
They obviously don’t have a brain, but it’s common for virologists to define them as very intelligent beings, they know how to enter a cell, disarm it and transform it to replicate their viral particles, and they also do something to change the host’s behavior Let’s see how that happens.
To find out if viruses can control our behavior, let’s look at the results of a recent study, a research published in the journal PLoS Pathogens, conducted by Drs. Claudia Hagbon and Maria Istrate, University of Linking, Sweden.
This work aimed to deepen knowledge about a type of infectious disease that kills 600,000 children each year, a very high number whose cause is a rotavirus, whose most obvious symptoms are always vomiting and diarrhoea. to be a mechanism for defending the body itself to combat the disease.
Vomiting was thought to come from the connection between the brain and the intestine, to rid the body of danger, from an ingested food that was damaged or another toxic agent.
In this case, Serotonin activated the nervous system so that the brain could generate this behavior and thus get rid of the harmful elements that were inside the body.
However, this team of Swedish doctors has discovered that it is rotavirus that controls the mechanisms of vomiting and diarrhoea, with a very specific purpose: to spread viral particles and infect others.
Can Viruses Control Our Behavior? The answer, as we see, is positive, their strategy is to make our symptoms a mechanism of infection to reach more people and create new hosts, in their goal of surviving and reproducing, they take control of behaviors and generate actions such as sneezing, vomiting and diarrhea.
The science of behavioral virology has gone further, research such as that of the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, Sweden, indicates something else.
Some viruses can completely change our behavior. They can cause irritability, insomnia, hyperactivity and even radically alter a person’s behavior.
An example of this can be seen in Creutzfeldt-Jakob (mad cow) disease, in which patients suffer from progressive dementia, difficulty walking, restlessness, and mood swings. Borna’s disease virus, for example, was first described in horses in 1766.
However, it has also infected some people, producing clinical images very similar to schizophrenia. Rabies, in turn, is an example of how a virus can affect an animal’s behavior.
In conclusion, fortunately, science protects us from the effects of most of these viruses, for the rest, for those of us who do not yet have vaccines or defense mechanisms, there is a very effective strategy: washing hands frequently and taking care of hygiene.