Social Interaction tagged posts

Jaideep Bains, professor in the Department of Physiology and Pharmacology, and Toni-Lee Sterley, postdoctoral fellow in Bains’ lab and the study’s lead author. Credit: Adrian Shellard, Hotchkiss Brain Institute.

Stress isn’t just contagious; it alters the brain on a cellular level. In a new study in Nature Neuroscience, Jaideep Bains, PhD, and his team at the Cumming School of Medicine’s Hotchkiss Brain Institute (HBI), at the University of Calgary have discovered that stress transmitted from others can change the brain in the same way as a real stress does. The study, in mice, also shows that the effects of stress on the brain are reversed in female mice following a social interaction. This was not true for male mice.

“Brain changes associated with stress underpin many mental illnesses in...

University of Virginia School of Medicine researchers have determined that the immune system directly affects and even controls, creatures’ social behavior, such as their desire to interact with others. So could immune system problems contribute to an inability to have normal social interactions? The answer appears to be yes, and could have great implications for neurological conditions eg autism-spectrum disorders and schizophrenia.

“The brain and the adaptive immune system were thought to be isolated from each other, and any immune activity in the brain was perceived as sign of a pathology. And now, not only are we showing that they are closely interacting, but some of our behavior traits might have evolved because of our immune response to pathogens,” explained Jonathan Kipnis, PhD...