Brain and health –
Be exposed to a “virtual” infection activates the immune system
A study by CHUV and Unige reveals that the brain, faced with a person who looks sick, activates an immune response preventively.
The study reveals a brain ability to anticipate an infectious danger and to engage the organism in a defensive response, even before a real pathogen intervened.
Chun
Being exposed to a “virtual” infection is enough to trigger an immune response close to that observed during a real infection. This is what researchers of the Chun andUniversity of Geneva (Unige), details a press release issued this Thursday.
The study, published on July 28 in “Nature Neuroscience“Faced around 250 volunteers with human avatars, some of which had visual signs of infections such as chickenpox. It reveals a hitherto unknown dialogue between the brain and the immune system: there is a defensive response initiated by the mere anticipation of an infectious danger, and not by a real pathogen.
Unpublished perspectives on immunity
Analyzes have shown that the brain, confronted on a screen with a threat of purely virtual infection, activated areas linked to threat detection and that immune markers appeared in the blood, as if the body faced a real pathogen. These immune responses were comparable to those of vaccinated patients.
These discoveries offer unprecedented perspectives for research on psychosomatic disorders or modulation of the immune response. According to the study, virtual reality could even become a tool to support the effectiveness of vaccines or help desensitize allergic people.
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