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Somethings are almost to big to comprehend...
Ok, so as I started talking about on the Nature Zombies page, Toxoplasmosis is a really strange parasite that affects humans. I told you all to Google it, but it keeps coming up in conversations, so I'm going to outline a little of what I've discovered from my research.
Toxoplasmosis affects the human brain and is thought to be possibly one potential cause of Schizophrenia. We've been having some interesting conversations about how the rise in infection rates due to cats being in such common close contact with humans now (as opposed to being outdoor predators, cats have only been kept commonly as actual house pets for the last 60 years or so, prior to that they were usually kept as tool to keep mice down and didn't often live indoors with humans the way they do now) and how that is a possible explanation for the rise in reckless violent behavior in human society.
http://www.damninteresting.com/?p=399
http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/EID/vol9no11/03-0143.htm
http://www.livescience.com/strangenews/060803_tgondii_culture.html
http://www.livescience.com/technology/060210_technovelgy.html
http://schizophreniabulletin.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/full/33/3/757 - really interesting
http://www.news-medical.net/?id=19237
I know that's a lot of information to plow through, but all of them have little snippets of information that build up the whole picture of what Toxoplasmosis can do to the human brain. The basic points are that over HALF of the world’s population is likely to be infected. The virus settles in the brain, there is no way without medical testing to know if you have it. You would have had mild flu-like symptoms, and that's it physically. However, once it's in your brain, the virus starts fiddling with your behavior... and it is different in men and women.
Men - more likely to be risk-taking, aggressive, neurotic.
Women - more likely to be promiscuous, negatively manipulative, self-destructive.
In fact, the differences are hard to pin down in full, as studies are still going on, and the sheer scope of what Toxoplasmosis is doing to the human brain is almost unbelievable when you start looking into what different studies are finding.
It seems evidently possible that our whole social behavior has been modified by this brain parasite, even possible to go so far as to say it explains the radical change in violence levels on a day to day basis, world wars, gang violence, criminal violence…
We have been wondering if some types of antisocial behavior might actually be some kind of subconscious physiological reaction to try and avoid "infected" humans - for example, people who try and avoid crowds at large venues, don't like going to clubs/pubs/bars etc I know that we humans react to things that we don't consciously understand, and that there have been some studies recently that shows that we have some kind of genetic memory perhaps that causes us to react to certain triggers in body language without our conscious awareness.
Considering all of that… It’s defiantly an interesting and, I feel, important area of medical research to keep an occasional eye on to see what discoveries are there over the next few years.
Toxoplasmosis affects the human brain and is thought to be possibly one potential cause of Schizophrenia. We've been having some interesting conversations about how the rise in infection rates due to cats being in such common close contact with humans now (as opposed to being outdoor predators, cats have only been kept commonly as actual house pets for the last 60 years or so, prior to that they were usually kept as tool to keep mice down and didn't often live indoors with humans the way they do now) and how that is a possible explanation for the rise in reckless violent behavior in human society.
http://www.damninteresting.com/?p=399
http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/EID/vol9no11/03-0143.htm
http://www.livescience.com/strangenews/060803_tgondii_culture.html
http://www.livescience.com/technology/060210_technovelgy.html
http://schizophreniabulletin.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/full/33/3/757 - really interesting
http://www.news-medical.net/?id=19237
I know that's a lot of information to plow through, but all of them have little snippets of information that build up the whole picture of what Toxoplasmosis can do to the human brain. The basic points are that over HALF of the world’s population is likely to be infected. The virus settles in the brain, there is no way without medical testing to know if you have it. You would have had mild flu-like symptoms, and that's it physically. However, once it's in your brain, the virus starts fiddling with your behavior... and it is different in men and women.
Men - more likely to be risk-taking, aggressive, neurotic.
Women - more likely to be promiscuous, negatively manipulative, self-destructive.
In fact, the differences are hard to pin down in full, as studies are still going on, and the sheer scope of what Toxoplasmosis is doing to the human brain is almost unbelievable when you start looking into what different studies are finding.
It seems evidently possible that our whole social behavior has been modified by this brain parasite, even possible to go so far as to say it explains the radical change in violence levels on a day to day basis, world wars, gang violence, criminal violence…
We have been wondering if some types of antisocial behavior might actually be some kind of subconscious physiological reaction to try and avoid "infected" humans - for example, people who try and avoid crowds at large venues, don't like going to clubs/pubs/bars etc I know that we humans react to things that we don't consciously understand, and that there have been some studies recently that shows that we have some kind of genetic memory perhaps that causes us to react to certain triggers in body language without our conscious awareness.
Considering all of that… It’s defiantly an interesting and, I feel, important area of medical research to keep an occasional eye on to see what discoveries are there over the next few years.
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