Toxoplasma gondii, unknown danger, unknown helper?
Few people have ever heard of the parasitic Toxoplasma gondii, even though 1/3 of all people have it. TG, as I will call it, is a protozoan – a single cell organism – that mainly infects cats, but can also use other animals, including humans, as intermediary.
pic: Wikimedia, Ke Hu and John M. Murray
TG causes Toxoplasmosis, an illness that mostly goes unnoticed and is only an immediate danger to those with a damaged immune system.
However TC has been linked in various species to behavioral change, like rodents no longer evading the smell of cats (which helps the organism to get into its main host animal).
human behavioral change
TC has been shown in studies to cause a variety of changes in the behavior of humans. Men were more introverted, but also more ready to take risks and to ignore rules. Women were more gullible, more worried about their image and followed rules more.
A cliche-sexist parasite...
People with Schizophrenia had a 2.7 times higher amount of antibodies against TC than the control group. Also the reduction of brain mass in schizophrenic people nearly never happens without TC infection.
But it needs to be said that all those changes are likely not caused by TC alone. TC can change the dopamine system, and that could explain behavioral changes. It might be that those changes only happen when a different illness is active.
However that influence could be quite big. One of the latest studies found that a TC infection might even change where you go in life.
we found that students (n = 1495) who tested IgG positive for T. gondii exposure were 1.4× more likely to major in business and 1.7× more likely to have an emphasis in ‘management and entrepreneurship' over other business-related emphases. Among professionals attending entrepreneurship events, T. gondii-positive individuals were 1.8× more likely to have started their own business compared with other attendees (n = 197).
It looks like the above mentioned “more risk less fear” for infected leads to more entrepreneurs, and that this change is true throughout the world.
I could not find if the study controlled for men/women. Maybe TC is a biological reason why men are more entrepreneurial than woman?
And I wonder if the Harvard Business School will recommend its students to eat cat shit in the future?
@alexander.alexis would love more research on this. He has an amazing blog that is barely active. Check it out.
Also it's nice to see you posting. STEEM has gone pretty deserted now.
It's become reactivated :D
I had this recent talk on facebook about free will. I was arguing philosophers have proved it doesn't exist. Long story short, at one point a party in the debate mentioned a brain tumor growing to the point that it affected a person's behavior, to the point where clearly that person can't be said to have free will.
Thing is, our brain itself is a tumor in a way. I mean, all our hormones, all the bacteria and viruses that co-inhabit our bodies, all our experiences and impressions we received throughout life - all those things amount to a giant tumor determining our behavior in a way that's as inescapable as a literal tumor.
Biologists, not Philosophers.
Philosophers wouldn't dare to prove such a thing, it would make all their effort meaningless ;)