Tag: schizophrenia

Toxoplasma Gondii

Hamar WilliamsLeave a comment

For anyone familiar with the bleak early days of this blog back in November / December last year when the drama of this 2020 was still a thing of science fiction, I mentioned I was reading a book called Gut by Giulia Enders. Well it turns out I’m still reading it. This longevity isn’t because it’s difficult, quite the opposite in fact or boring, also quite the opposite. I just get distracted and either read other things or am too busy, but keep dipping into it when I fancy reading some more. This morning I read a little on Toxoplasma gondii. For anyone Scottish it is simply unimaginable not to be familiar with the film Trainspotting, and for those who are, they will be aware of this bacteria from the character Tommy catching it from his cat before dying from it and heroin. Naturally then this little mini-chapter grabbed my attention.

It turns out it’s actually an incredibly interesting bacteria which considering it’s size can have an enormous affect on it’s host. Cats, not all of course, carry this bacteria and it is spread to humans usually through their faeces in cat litter trays. It can find it’s way onto raw vegetables in your garden if a cat has either done it’s business or died within, as well as through animals such as pigs or chickens when we eat them. The chances of humans contracting toxoplasma are, in percentage terms, about as high as your age and about a third of the global population have them. We’re talking a reasonably high probability and billions of people. They don’t have an overly negative immediate affect on the human body, sometimes creating flu-like symptoms, so not too dissimilar to this virus for many people. Pregnant women though have to be very careful as it can damage the unborn baby and lead to miscarriages. What is fascinating about it though is the affect it has on our behaviour.

A study at Oxford University discovered rats, who would ordinarily and instinctively avoid cats urine, would when infected with toxoplasma not only be fearless of the cats urine but actively stay near it. This bacteria removed certain inhibitors in the rats brain, the bacteria which wanted to exist within the cats gut was offering up the rat, it’s host, as dinner and sacrifice. This tiny bacteria was influencing and arguably controlling the actions of a far larger creature. The rats were indifferent to human, dog and other varieties of urine, the rats and their cat loving bacteria interested in cats piss alone.

Like anything of this ilk proved on rats it wasn’t long before it was tested out on humans. She refers to a large scale experiement in which 3,890 soldiers from the Czech army were tested for toxoplasma and then over the next year the numbers of accidents they were involved in was recorded and analysed. It turned out those with the bacteria, and particularly those with rhesus negative blood type, were involved in the highest number of accidents. It turns out, and I’m going to crudely paraphrase this, that when infected the immune system activates an enzyme called IDO which breaks down a substance the invaders like to eat, forcing them to become dormant. Unfortunately this substance is also vital in the creation of serotonin, a lack of which is linked to depression and various anxiety disorders, as well as lethargy and general indifference. IDO is also highly activated during pregnancy, hence the link, and this and the immune systems response can sometimes treat the baby as a semi-alien which leads to miscarriages.

To take this further, the toxoplasma bacteria hide away in a few places but predominantly the amygdala section of the brain. This is also the area in which our fear receptors exist. This is also seemingly the part of the brain responsible for the decision making process, if you’re a parasite attempting to promote self-destructive tendencies, this is probably the best place to exist. Humans with toxoplasma were also found to have a different response to cats urine than those without, men especially seemed to prefer it with women less so. Interestingly the proportion of carriers among schizophrenics is about twice that among non-schizophrenics.

Science and medicine move slowly, unless you’re creating vaccines for pandemics of course, so it’ll still be a long time before these factors are tested for regularly and this understanding of behaviour and bacteria become common practice. It does though make you think about certain behaviours in people that just seem illogical and insane. Why someone could be so reckless is now slightly less inexplicable. Or even perhaps why you yourself have done so many stupid things over the years. I’m not suggesting we all go out and sniff cats urine to check our response of course, but this does open possibilities for how we view and understand behavioural patterns. This is just one parasite and if it’s possible for this one to create these suicidal and reckless tendencies, how do we know other bacteria don’t also affect our behaviours. There is so much we just don’t understand about our bodies yet we behave as if we know it all. The gut and the varieties of little enzymes and bacteria within can change everything about us yet we give it next to no attention. I am barely even a layman in regards to these things but it is exciting that we are starting to really see some movement and understanding of things within us that could potentially change our lives for the better. Who knows, if we can positively change our own behaviours with this, maybe science could save the whole world in a most highly unexpected of ways too. Either that or the cats may just take over the world after all.

BR#5 – Frankenstein

Hamar WilliamsLeave a comment

From time to time as adults we throw a little classic in to our reading. The kind of story that spawned others and has passed the test of time. The kind you could have studied at school. That last one in a way makes it sound unappealing considering we don’t always look back on the book we studied at school fondly. Frankenstein though isn’t one of them, it’s one of the ones you wish you had studied at school. It has so many of those moments you could see yourself analysing in a class, it has layers. It is also very simple and obvious. A main uncomplicated but unbelievable story. Take it at face value and that’s it.

The writing feels like it could be updated although it shouldn’t ever happen. When things are translated they are also updated in language and in a subtle way style. A book written in English will forever be ageing. I would love to know how Tolstoy sounds to a Russian than he is in the latest translation I read. In that sense I can tell it was written in the early nineteenth century. While that’s not a problem it will be one day.

Shelley approaches all sorts of ideas and concepts throughout the book. They are too numerous to go into detail in just five hundred words but she discusses justice, the role of god, she approaches ideas of personhood and what is is to be a person, our understanding of ethics, even existentialism but this was long before it had become an ism. This is an entire philosophy course for a year covered. There are many essays written on it. I imagine it’s a common understanding too that there is the potential schizophrenia angle which relates in a way to ideas of duality in the book. They need each other, the monster never tries to hurt him and when he dies the monster goes off to die too. Did Frankenstein give a part of himself in the creation of the monster. In a way the monster shows more of what we call humanity than Viktor Frankenstein who in the end becomes a monster himself in a sad way. In a contemporary sense we could think of the development of Artificial Intelligence. The monster has not only an ability to learn but has self-consciousness, the ultimate stage of creating free thinking robots. I could go on and on.

Quite interestingly the book has nearly as interesting a back story. Mary Shelley was the daughter of the revolutionary thinkers William Godwin and Mary Wollstonecraft, and the wife of the poet Percy Shelley. In the ‘Year Without Summer’ of 1816 when they were visiting the exiled and infamous poet and writer amongst many things, Lord Byron in Switzerland, the weather forced them to stay indoors and Byron came up with the idea they all wrote horror stories. In a dream over the next few nights the story of Frankenstein and his monster came to Mary Shelley.

Along with all this and not to be forgotten it’s actually quite a good story. You don’t just read it to learn and look smart, you read it to enjoy. I assume they teach it in schools still and if they don’t can’t think why. It’s so full of everything it would be a waste. I ended it really feeling happy that I had just read a good book. We all should, we may just learn a little eloquence and humanity from a monster.