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Can viruses control our behavior? Many people have asked themselves this question at some point. They also thought, probably, that this is something from a science fiction movie or even a horror movie.
However, science is used to investigating very complex topics and has found that, in fact, this can happen. Viruses can alter our actions, which in a way means they can control our behavior.
However, this does not happen in a direct way. The virus does not hijack your will or make decisions for you. In fact, he does it in a more cunning, silent, and inquisitive way. For if there is something these microscopic infectious beings want above all, it is to survive, replicate and be part of complex ecosystems.
Therefore, one way to achieve this goal is to alter the behavior of the host in which the virus is lodging so that it, by itself, spreads the viral particles. Thus, most of the symptoms we experience when we experience a flu, diarrhea or even a simple common cold is aimed at transmitting the infection to other healthy individuals.
Sneezing, for example, is more than a natural mechanism for expelling invaders from our bodies. It is also a way in which the virus spreads, so that it can effectively jump from one organism to another. And it works, as we well know. However, there are even more fascinating and disturbing data on the subject.
How can viruses control our behavior?
The word virus, by itself, scares us, and even more so in the current context marked by COVID-19. As the saying goes around, our worst enemies are precisely those that we cannot see, those that are only visible under a microscope lens and that have the power to affect our health.
However, what are these beings really like? In reality, they are nothing more than packets of genetic information. Tiny containers made from a protein capsule.
Its sole purpose is to introduce itself into cells of other organisms in order to survive and multiply. They not only infect humans, but also other animals, plants, fungi and even bacteria.
So, faced with the question of how viruses can control our behavior, the first thing we should understand about them is that they are more intelligent beings than we usually think.
They obviously don’t have a brain, but it ‘s common for virologists to define them as highly intelligent beings. They know how to enter a cell, disarm it, and transform it so that it replicates your viral particles. What’s more, something they also do is alter the host’s behavior. Let’s see how this happens.
Symptoms of Diseases: Ways of Spreading Viruses
To find out if viruses can control our behavior, let’s look at the results of a recent study. It is a research published in the PLoS Pathogens journal , carried out by doctors Claudia Hagbon and Maria Istrate, from the University of Linköping, Sweden.
In this work, the objective was to deepen the knowledge a little more about a type of infectious disease that, each year, ends the lives of 600,000 children. A very high figure whose cause is a rotavirus. The most obvious symptoms are always vomiting and diarrhea. It was believed that vomiting was the body’s own defense mechanism to fight the disease.
It was thought that vomiting arose from the connection between the brain and the intestine, to free the body from a danger, an ingested food that was spoiled or some other toxic agent.
In this case, serotonin activated the nervous system so that the brain could generate this behavior and thus be able to get rid of the harmful elements that were inside the organism.
However, this team of Swedish doctors discovered that rotavirus controls the mechanisms of vomiting and diarrhea, and it does so for a very specific purpose: to spread viral particles and infect others.
The science of behavioral virology
Can viruses control our behavior? The answer, as we can see, is positive. His strategy is to turn our symptoms into an infection mechanism to reach more people and create new hosts. In their goal to survive and replicate, 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 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 change a person’s behavior.
An example of this can be seen in Creutzfeldt-Jakob (mad cow) disease, in which patients experience progressive dementia, difficulty walking, agitation and mood swings. Borna’s disease virus, for example, was first described in horses in 1766.
However, it also came to infect some people, producing clinical conditions very similar to schizophrenia. Rabies, in turn, is an example of how a virus can affect an animal’s behavior.
In conclusion, luckily science protects us from the effect of most of these viruses. For the rest, those for whom we do not yet have vaccines or defense mechanisms, there is a highly effective strategy: washing hands frequently and taking care of hygiene.
