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The brain can recall and reawaken past immune responses

quantamagazine.org

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Re: The brain can recall and reawaken past immune responses

#11

Post by [deleted] »

maxerickson wrote: post #10
DoreenMichele wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My understanding is sugar pills are commonly used as a placebo. Sugar helps take the edge off pain, though it doesn't work the same as a pain killer. People going through withdrawal tend to be sugar fiends. So I'm a bit skeptical of the assumption that "placebos do absolutely nothing, medically speaking" to begin with. (Not dismissing your suggestion here.)

A few hundred milligrams bound in a pill is probably different than a bowl of ice cream or bar of chocolate.

[deleted]

Re: The brain can recall and reawaken past immune responses

#12

Post by NavinF »

gwern wrote: post #6

Preprint fulltext: https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.12.03.409813v2.... "Remembering immunity: Neuronal ensembles in the insular cortex encode and retrieve specific immune responses", Koren et al 2020

People who have more background than me: What does this have to do with memory and recall of immune responses?

So they infected a mouse, monitored the mouse’s neurons to see which ones are active during inflammation, then waited a while, then hit those neurons again and observed inflammation even though there’s no disease the second time.

If they hit the “same” neurons in a mouse that never had the disease in its lifetime, wouldn’t they observe inflammation without memory? (I don’t think they tried it)

Re: The brain can recall and reawaken past immune responses

#13

Post by cpncrunch »

DoreenMichele wrote: post #9
cpncrunch wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Placebos generally aren't sugar pills, unless there is sugar in the medication itself (which I don't think is generally the case). They are designed to be impossible to tell apart from the active medication. The pain-killing effect has nothing to do with sugar.

A placebo is a substance or treatment which is designed to have no therapeutic value. Common placebos include inert tablets (like sugar pills)... https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Placebo Not to say Wikipedia is infallible. I'm sure it's not. Just checking how clueless I am and the internet suggests my understanding is "common knowledge." Perhaps you can share more of your knowledge about what placebo pills typically c…

Actually, I did some searching and it seems that most RCTs don't actually list the contents of the placebo pill. I found this article which describes the problem:

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-whats-placebo-idUSTRE69H5...

Re: The brain can recall and reawaken past immune responses

#15

Post by DoreenMichele »

cpncrunch wrote: post #13
DoreenMichele wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A placebo is a substance or treatment which is designed to have no therapeutic value. Common placebos include inert tablets (like sugar pills)... https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Placebo Not to say Wikipedia is infallible. I'm sure it's not. Just checking how clueless I am and the internet suggests my understanding is "common knowledge." Perhaps you can share more of your knowledge about what placebo pills typically c…

Actually, I did some searching and it seems that most RCTs don't actually list the contents of the placebo pill. I found this article which describes the problem: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-whats-placebo-idUSTRE69H5...

Thank you. Very enlightening and happily agrees with both your statements (that they usually aren't sugar pills) and mine (that placebos themselves may have medical impact).

Re: The brain can recall and reawaken past immune responses

#16

Post by mountainriver »

mmastrac wrote: post #8

It'll be interesting to see if this validates the bizarre claims of the Wim Hof method. I'm skeptical, but the evidence _seems_ to suggest a lot of conscious control over some autonomic functions.

Win Hof has actually had legitimate studies done where he has proven he can activate his immune system with his mind

Re: The brain can recall and reawaken past immune responses

#17

Post by jacobsimon »

NavinF wrote: post #12
gwern wrote: post #6

Preprint fulltext: https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.12.03.409813v2.... "Remembering immunity: Neuronal ensembles in the insular cortex encode and retrieve specific immune responses", Koren et al 2020

People who have more background than me: What does this have to do with memory and recall of immune responses? So they infected a mouse, monitored the mouse’s neurons to see which ones are active during inflammation, then waited a while, then hit those neurons again and observed inflammation even though there’s no disease the second time. If they hit the “same” neurons in a mouse that never had the disease in its lif…

That’s a really good question. I didn’t read the full paper yet, but I think one of the important discoveries here is that there’s a direct causal relationship from brain->immune system in the first place that would allow them to trigger specific responses.

It’s also probably hard to target those same specific neurons without first triggering the immune response since that’s part of their method for finding them.

Re: The brain can recall and reawaken past immune responses

#18

Post by dham »

cpncrunch wrote: post #5
panabee wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

yes and perhaps some placebo effects activate stored immunological responses.

I think more technically it is nocebo effects which cause the (bad) immune response, whereas the placebo effect cancels or at least ameliorates it. Paul Garner has described how worry about covid helped to maintain his long-covid / ME/CFS symptoms, and he was finally able to recover after addressing those fears: https://blogs.bmj.com/bmj/2021/01/25/paul-garner-on-his-reco... I managed to fully recover from ME/CFS mys…

I think that some people have post viral mental disorders. Or just general mental problems after going through anything out of the ordinary with their body. After going through Thyroid Cancer I generally don't give two thoughts about much of anything, while people at work are 25 years old and getting boosters for Covid. Some kind of mental thing going on here.

One thing I also found out during this pandemic is people generally don't get sick which was surprising to me since I have 2 kids and have generally been sick with a cold every 2 to 3 months for a decade. Maybe that's why Covid wasn't that bad for me? Although it did put me on my ass for 2 days.

Re: The brain can recall and reawaken past immune responses

#19

Post by User23 »

mountainriver wrote: post #16
mmastrac wrote: post #8

It'll be interesting to see if this validates the bizarre claims of the Wim Hof method. I'm skeptical, but the evidence _seems_ to suggest a lot of conscious control over some autonomic functions.

Win Hof has actually had legitimate studies done where he has proven he can activate his immune system with his mind

Given the brain’s regulatory role in virtually every aspect of homeostasis, I’m surprised that folks are surprised that by mental exercises autonomous functions can be influenced if not controlled. Wim Hof is interesting, but any Hindu can tell you that yogis have been performing similar feats for millennia.

Re: The brain can recall and reawaken past immune responses

#20

Post by mementomorti »

mmastrac wrote: post #8

It'll be interesting to see if this validates the bizarre claims of the Wim Hof method. I'm skeptical, but the evidence _seems_ to suggest a lot of conscious control over some autonomic functions.

It seems the immune response of Wim Hof method occurs as a result of intentionally creating an adrenaline response in the body. Apparently other breathing techniques do this prior to Wim Hof (Tummo breathing). Andrew Huberman, a neuroscientist at Stanford talks about the science of this https://youtu.be/JPX8g8ibKFc?t=2161 (at that timestamp he talks specifically about adrenaline breathing)
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