1 in 4 People Infected with Mood Altering Brain Parasites!!!!

I just read this in a science magazine I have a subscription to. It seems more like sci-Fi but is actually sci-fact. These little parasites can infect your brain and alter your psychology and from reports are fairly common in humans. About 1 in 4 people in the United States is reportedly infected with these buggers.

Parasites that sneak into the brain may alter your behavior and health

In the United States, almost one in four residents over the age of 12 has the infection. In other parts of the world, rates are as high as 95 percent. An unlucky minority of these infected people become quite ill. Most, however, don’t even know that their muscles and brains carry the parasite.

“Where science meets science fiction” is how Michael Dickinson of the University of Washington in Seattle describes studies of parasites that hack into their hosts’ nervous systems. The Journal of Experimental Biology, where Dickinson serves as an editor, dedicated its Jan. 1 issue to this emerging field, dubbed “neuroparasitology.” In those pages and elsewhere, clues to T. gondii’s bizarre biology are emerging. And growing evidence suggests that the hidden parasite may have visible effects.

Studies comparing the infected and the noninfected raise the possibility that the parasite tweaks a person’s personality or ups the risk of suicide attempts, brain cancer and schizophrenia. Studies in people even report links between T. gondii and traffic accidents, greater odds of having sons than daughters, extra height and unusual opinions about the smell of urine.

If so much of what people do turns out to have a touch of parasite about it, then the notion of normal human behavior may have to change. What is “routine” for people might need to encompass not just the activities of a Homo sapiens by itself, but also the doings of Homo sapiens as a walking ecosystem where microbes and mammal intermingle.

I found this interesting.

Whatever the mechanism, the link between parasite infection and schizophrenia looks moderately strong based on 38 studies, Yolken and his colleagues concluded last May in Schizophrenia Bulletin.

They didn’t have this graph in the online article but it is in the magazine where I first read about it. Some of the affects it can have on humans are.

Men:
Less likely to follow social rules.
More suspicious.
More prone to Jealousy.

Women:
More warmhearted.
More easygoing.
Less suspicious.
Less prone to jealousy.

These side effects don’t sound bad for women IMO. I do not think there is much to worry about with this. I just find it interesting and this is the first I have heard of it. They are currently researching the effects of the parasite and it seems those tests are focused on the animal kingdom. It is something to keep our eyes on for the future. One of the researchers realized they were infected and it was not a cause for concern. This has been going on throughout history but we are starting to understand and be aware of it now. I wonder what they may learn from this in the future and just how much they affect us.

www.sciencenews.org...

I heard some Bio Warfare guy talking about this T gondi from cats....that they had weaponised this thing possibly......
It IS the same bug from cats right?
www.theatlantic.com...

excerpt from link......
The psychiatrist E. Fuller Torrey agrees—though he came to this viewpoint from a completely different angle than either Webster or Flegr. His opinion stems from decades of research into the root causes of schizophrenia. “Textbooks today still make silly statements that schizophrenia has always been around, it’s about the same incidence all over the world, and it’s existed since time immemorial,” he says. “The epidemiology literature contradicts that completely.” In fact, he says, schizophrenia did not rise in prevalence until the latter half of the 18th century, when for the first time people in Paris and London started keeping cats as pets. The so-called cat craze began among “poets and left-wing avant-garde Greenwich Village types,” says Torrey, but the trend spread rapidly—and coinciding with that development, the incidence of schizophrenia soared.

What?
The parasite can alter moods, to such a degree that it may increase suicidal behavior, but they aren't to worried about it?

How about finding a way to kill it?

That was some very interesting yet extremely creepy reading!

Cats are evil. Most people that have this also have cats. You know, the crazy cat ladies?

This parasite is around mainly to effect rats. It makes them sexually stimulated by the smell of cat urine, causing the rats to be attracted to where cats prey. Toxoplasma gondii essentially leads rats to their deaths, by cats, who unknowingly spread the parasite that helps further their species.

Now it's effecting humans. One of the side effects that OP didn't mention is that it makes people more reckless. More people that have it have died in motorcycle accidents than people that haven't.

reply to post by stirling


Yeah it’s the same from cats. This isn’t a weapon zed version this is just further studies into it. The link has the full article. Some of it is a bit boring but the implications to such things a schizophrenia can have some repercusions. If the science holds true then I can see somewhere down the line this being used as an excuse in a murder trial

I think that we should willingly infect all women. Definitely. Well, maybe not if the side effects can be bad. But I dunno, it still sounds pretty good, haha. This is quite shocking really, and the implications are staggering, as the OP implied. We would have to change the way we both thought about, and approached treatment for, psychiatric and mood disorders. Wow. I never would have thought such a thing was occurring.

reply to post by jessejamesxx


I'm a crazy cat lady. Wonder if I has parasites?

reply to post by jessejamesxx


LOL it's not just cats!
It also said you can get it from contaminated meat. And a bunch of other animals have it too.

I really don't want to think about the possibility that we are just a load of biochemical/physical processes and things that interfere with these processes, like parasitic invasion!

Nah! God is a much much nicer idea!

reply to post by jessejamesxx


Yes it can affect dopamine levels in humans and as you said there is a connection to those infected being in more car crashes. What I found interesting is that 1 in 4 people in the US are infected by conservative numbers in other regions the infection percentage jumps to 95%.

BTW I don’t think cats are evil. I like mine.

reply to post by Grimpachi

Whatever you say

Originally posted by Grimpachi
reply to post by jessejamesxx

 

BTW I don’t think cats are evil. I like mine.

That's proof you already infected
____________________________

I wonder if ''Herpes simplex'' also influences many thoughts or other virusses, I do think it stimulates with the feeling; for wanting sex. Should be logical anyways since with kissing you can infect other people. I know it's not a real parasite but it's in your body forever.

My cat pickd me out and simply moved in.....hmmmmmmmm.......
I have been feeding it and caring for it since as well.......hmmmmmmmmmm
Ya dont think?
Naaw thats too far out.........
but maybe.........

reply to post by stirling


Wouldn’t it be interesting if they found that the primary cause of schizophrenia is because of these parasites? I didn’t find anything in the article about how to kill the parasites. Just think though. If the primary cause is the parasite then finding a way to kill it could solve many mental health issues. Maybe big pharma doesn’t want to find a cure.

Edit to add

There is quite a bit more to the article I linked but I didn’t want to sound like a fear monger. I do think it is interesting and worth being aware of.

BTW yup I have been assimilated by my cats. There is no hope for me.

Originally posted by stirling
My cat pickd me out and simply moved in.....hmmmmmmmm.......
I have been feeding it and caring for it since as well.......hmmmmmmmmmm
Ya dont think?
Naaw thats too far out.........
but maybe.........

SOunds a lot like my sister in law ( the whole moving in suddenly and making other folks care and feed her) .... Hmmmmmm


ANyway, more info on ATS.. pretty good collection of links to learn about Toxoplasmosis.
www.abovetopsecret.com...
www.abovetopsecret.com...




Excellent thread OP.. IMO we arent paying enough attention to this.

reply to post by Plugin



Who can say for sure it isn't humans who pass it on to the poor susceptible kittens? Anyway truth is parasites rule the World, didn't you know?

reply to post by Shema


Hm yea we rule.

reply to post by Grimpachi


Ah thank you for the info!

I think this further proves that my wife has a brain parasite!

reply to post by Grimpachi


I am fascinated by Toxiplasmosis gondii and insist on boring senseless those who make the mistake of telling me they have never heard of it before

A couple of really interesting studies...

In a paper published in the online edition of Proceedings of the Royal Society, United States Geological Survey researcher Kevin Lafferty argues that a significant factor in why some countries exhibit higher levels of neuroticism than others may be the prevalence of the parasite Toxoplasma gondii. The study also indicates that it may influence a society’s preference for strict laws, an expression of uncertainty avoidance, and its valuation of ‘masculine’ priorities such as competitiveness and financial success over ‘feminine’ values like relationship-building.

“Toxoplasma appears to explain 30% of the variation in neuroticism among countries, 15% of the uncertainty avoidance among Western nations and 30% of the sex role differences among Western nations,” Lafferty said via e-mail.

Lafferty analyzed preexisting data on Toxoplasma prevalence and mean trait levels in 39 countries. He found a significant linear correlation between latent Toxoplasma prevalence and neuroticism with a few outliers, including the unusually neurotic nations of Hungary and China and the notably easygoing Turkey.

Links between Toxoplasma, uncertainty avoidance and concerns about masculinity initially appeared to be insignificant but later emerged when Lafferty focused on Western nations.

Lafferty based his analysis on earlier research by Jaroslav Flegr, a parasitologist at Prague’s Charles University, which showed that in humans, Toxoplasma infection correlates highly with certain personality traits: Infected men tended to have lower levels of intelligence, superego strength and novelty-seeking, while infected women exhibited higher levels of intelligence, superego strength and warmth. Infected people of both sexes tend to be susceptible to feelings of guilt.

“We have the data showing that Toxoplasma-infected men are scored as more dominant and more masculine than Toxoplasma-free men by female observers.”

seedmagazine.com...

Robert Sapolsky, a neuroscientist at Stanford University, and his colleagues have carried the experimental torch foreward. In 2006, they demonstrated just how precise Toxoplasma’s effects are. They found that infected rats did not lose their fear across the board. Dog urine still spooked them, and they could be trained to get scared of new stimuli. Only their innate fear of cats changed. Sapolsky’s team then looked at where the parasite actually ended up in the rat brain. They found Toxoplasma cysts clumped around the amygdala, a region of the brain that’s heavily involved in fear and other emotions.

Now Sapolsky and his colleagues have looked even closer at the parasite’s effects. They had rats sniff various odors and then examined their brains to look for a telltale protein called c-Fos. When neurons fire, they produce c-Fos, and so the more active a region of the brain, the more c-Fos accumulates in it. The scientists found two big differences in infected rat brains when they sniffed cat urine, both of which occurred in the region around the amygadala. A circuit in the brain that helps produce defensive behaviors became less active.

Near that circuit is another circuit that triggers sexual arousal.

And the parasite also altered this sexual arousal circuit. It increased the activity of those neurons.

blogs.discovermagazine.com...

I think this is amazing, and given that our relationship with cats, as the primary controllers of rodent pests has existed since we began forming settlements, I am somewhat inclined to believe that it integral to how our present culture has evolved, and possibly even, why matriarchial societies were eclipsed in favour of more territorially based patriarchies.

Plus, I always fancied myself as Jadzia Daz and wanted my own symbient to host

reply to post by jessejamesxx


OH no... cats are divine.

Please dont start something that will only cause harm to the innocent.

You must take full responsibility on your posts on a public forum...

Shame on you.