Can Viruses Control Our Behavior?

Can viruses control our behavior? This may not be a question you have ever asked yourself, but many have wondered. It is true that it may seem that this question comes from a science fiction movie or even a horror novel. However, science, which is used to asking much more complex questions, has discovered that they actually do: viruses can change our behavior.

Of course, they do not do this directly. They do not hijack our will or make decisions for us. In fact, they do it in a more sibilant, quiet and cunning way. This is because if there is one thing that these infectious microscopic beings want above all else, it is to survive, multiply and be a part of complex ecosystems.

Precisely because of this, one way for them to achieve this vital goal is to change the behavior of the host they have settled into in order to spread more viral particles. Thus, many of these symptoms we experience when we go through the flu, diarrhea or even a simple cold are meant to be transmitted to other healthy individuals to spread the infection.

Sneezing, for example, is more than just a natural mechanism for getting intruders out of our bodies. It is also a way for viruses to “jump” from one organism to another. In fact, this is something that works for them, as we know very well. However, there are even more fascinating (and disturbing) facts on this subject.

How can viruses control our behavior?

The word “virus” in itself is already something that scares us, and this is especially true now that we are fighting COVID-19. As people often say, our worst enemies are precisely those we cannot see. Those that we can only see under a microscope and that are able to impair our health.

What exactly are these living beings like? In reality, they are nothing more than packages of genetic information. They are containers surrounded by an eye-catching protein capsule.

Their sole purpose is to enter the cells of other organisms in order to survive and multiply. Not only do they infect humans, but they also invade animals, plants, fungi and even bacteria.

When we are asked how viruses can control our behavior, the first thing we need to understand about them is that they are smarter than we think.

Of course, they lack brains, but it is common for virologists to define them as highly intelligent beings. They know how to get into a cell, “disarm” it and transform it so that it can replicate viral particles. In addition, as we mentioned above, they also change the behavior of the host. Let’s take a look at how they do it.

The symptoms of a disease: How the virus spreads

To find out if viruses can control our behavior, we will refer to a recent study. It was published in the journal PLOS Pathogens, which was led by Dr. Claudia Hagbon and Dr. Maria Istrate from Linköping University in Sweden.

In this study, they tried to dive deeper into a type of infectious disease that kills 600,000 children each year. This is a very high number, and the cause is a rotavirus.

The most obvious symptoms are always vomiting and diarrhea. It was believed that vomiting was one of the body’s own defense mechanisms against the disease.

It was believed that vomiting followed this connection between the brain and the stomach to get a dangerous element, bad food or other toxic agent out of the body.

In this case, it was the serotonin that activated the nervous system so that the brain generated this behavior, and thus could get these harmful elements out of the body.

However, the team of Swedish doctors discovered the following: rotavirus controls the mechanisms of vomiting and diarrhea, and it does so with a very specific purpose: to spread virus particles and infect other people.

The science behind behavioral virology

Can viruses control our behavior? The answer is, as we can see, yes. They already do, and their strategy is to turn our symptoms into a mechanism for infecting other people or other hosts . In their attempts to survive and multiply, they take control of behaviors such as sneezing, vomiting and diarrhea.

However, the science of behavioral virology has gone even further. Research such as that at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, Sweden, has revealed something more.

Some viruses can change our behavior completely. They can cause irritability, insomnia, hyperactivity and even radically change a person’s behavior.

An example of this is Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (mad cow disease), where the animals suffer from progressive dementia, difficulty walking, agitation and mood swings. Another example is the Borna disease virus , which was first described in horses in 1766.

However, it has also affected some people, causing clinical symptoms that are very similar to schizophrenia. Rabies is another example of how a virus can change an animal’s behavior.

Fortunately, science protects us from the effects of many of these viruses. As for the rest, those we do not have a vaccine or defense mechanism against yet, there is a very effective strategy: frequent hand washing and good hygiene.