A Virus That ‘Makes You Stupid’

[Santa]

http://www.secretsofthefed.com/scientists-a-virus-that-makes-you-stupid-has-infected-up-to-12-of-humanity/

SCIENTISTS: A Virus That ‘Makes You Stupid’ Has Infected Up To 1/2 of Humanity

Although a few stops short of a zombie apocalypse, and a bit more exciting thantoxoplasmosis (which may affect 1/3 of humans), a newly found algae virus appears to be negatively impacting the cognitive abilities of at least those living in cities on the ocean.

algalvirus

This is actually pretty revolutionary, primarily because it is the first known example of a virus completely jumping kingdoms and moving between plants and animals. The virus,called ATCV-1, which first showed up assays of human brain tissue several years ago, was initially assumed to have entered the tissue after the death of the patients. This post-mortem hypothesis was quickly defeated when the virus started showing up in the throats of people with psychiatric diseases.

Infectious disease expert Robert Yolken fr,om Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore, Maryland, and his colleagues were investigating what pathogens play a role in these psychiatric conditions. At first, they didn’t know what ATCV-1 was, but a database search exposed its identity as a virus that typically infects a species of freshwater green algae.

A follow-up study of 92 healthy people found that 43% of them had the virus, and that was associated with a reduction in cognitive functioning by approximately 10%. To see if this was really more likely simply a correlation, and not a causation, the cognitive experiments were repeated with mice (further reducing the number of complex variables and genetic differences when dealing with humans). Surprisingly, the 10% reduction in cognitive ability was exactly replicated in the mice (10% longer to escape a maze, and 20% less time investigating a new object), as well as revealing that infection with ACTV-1 changed the expression levels of 1300 genes found in brain tissue!

Before you stop eating sea food, no one has figured out how this virus infects people or how many people actually have it (the preliminary studies were carried out in Baltimore). Although it seems likely at this point, there is not even any guarantee that it is actually slowing down those who are infected. More follow-up studies are going to be needed before we can really characterize exactly how this virus infects and affects humans, and through what channels so many could become infected: by the ocean breeze, sushi, or something else entirely?

[singular_me]

was hoping to see written april 1st ...
then I searched... http://news.sciencemag.org/biology/2014/10/algal-virus-found-humans-slows-brain-activity

with epigentics theory saying that the environment is a lot more important than heredity, this amount to an IQ plague.

edit: now waiting for big pharma to do something about it...

[Publico]

It's infected pretty much everybody in Washington.

[Buffalo]

The article talks about the virus negatively impacting the cognitive abilities those living in cities on the ocean then it states "a database search exposed its identity as a virus that typically infects a species of freshwater green algae."??

[Neuro]

The article talks about the virus negatively impacting the cognitive abilities those living in cities on the ocean then it states "a database search exposed its identity as a virus that typically infects a species of freshwater green algae."??
It was written on 1st of April.

[Santa]

The article talks about the virus negatively impacting the cognitive abilities those living in cities on the ocean then it states "a database search exposed its identity as a virus that typically infects a species of freshwater green algae."??

By
Elizabeth Pennisi
27 October 2014 3:30 pm

http://news.sciencemag.org/biology/2014/10/algal-virus-found-humans-slows-brain-activity


It’s not such a stretch to think that humans can catch the Ebola virus from monkeys and the flu virus from pigs. After all, they are all mammals with fundamentally similar physiologies. But now researchers have discovered that even a virus found in the lowly algae can make mammals its home. The invader doesn’t make people or mice sick, but it does seem to slow specific brain activities.

The virus, called ATCV-1, showed up in human brain tissue several years ago, but at the time researchers could not be sure whether it had entered the tissue before or after the people died. Then, it showed up again in a survey of microbes and viruses in the throats of people with psychiatric disease. Pediatric infectious disease expert Robert Yolken from Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore, Maryland, and his colleagues were trying to see if pathogens play a role in these conditions. At first, they didn't know what ATCV-1 was, but a database search revealed its identity as a virus that typically infects a species of green algae found in lakes and rivers.

The researchers wanted to find out if the virus was in healthy people as well as sick people. They checked for it in 92 healthy people participating in a study of cognitive function and found it in 43% of them. What’s more, those infected with the virus performed 10% worse than uninfected people on tests requiring visual processing. They were slower in drawing a line connecting a sequence of numbers randomly placed on a page, for example. And they seemed to have shorter attention spans, the researchers report online today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The effects were modest, but significant.

The slower brain function was not associated with any differences in sex, income or education level, race, place of birth, or cigarette smoking. But that doesn't necessarily mean the virus causes cognitive decline; it might just benefit from some other factor that impairs the brain in some people, such as other infectious agents, heavy metals, or pollutants, the researchers say.

To test for causality, the team injected uninfected and infected green algae into the mouths of mice. (They could tell that the mice became infected with the virus because they developed antibodies to it.) Infected and uninfected mice underwent a battery of tests. The two groups were about on par with how well they moved, but infected animals took 10% longer to find their way out of mazes and spent 20% less time exploring new objects—indications that they had poorer attention spans and were not as good at remembering their surroundings.

The researchers also studied gene activity in the animals' hippocampus, a part of the brain important for memory and understanding one's whereabouts. They found changes in the activity of almost 1300 genes in the infected animals. Some of those genes affect how the brain reacts to a key chemical messenger called dopamine, and others are important in immune function. Yolken has not yet found the virus in the brain but suspects it may affect the brain through its influence on the immune system, stimulating certain immune responses that might in turn affect gene expression in the brain.

The researchers and others have found this virus in samples around the world but have yet to test whether it’s present in people outside of Baltimore, where the study was done. And a few people carry antibodies to the virus, Yolken says. But he says they are still not 100% certain if and how the virus infects people.

The cognitive effects were small, notes Joram Feldon, a neuroscientist emeritus at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich who was not involved with the work. He praises the finding for being innovative, but says “if you ask me if I am worried about the existence of this virus, I am not.”

Allan Kalueff, the director of the ZENEREI Institute in Slidell, Louisiana, who was not involved with the work, suspects that other viruses may affect human sensory processing and behavior. He says he wonders whether these results indicate that there may be health risks to workers in the seafood industry or who work around water where they may be exposed to this algal virus. "But we clearly need more studies, including both animal and plant/algal studies."

[Santa]

It was written on 1st of April.

It's not an April fools prank.

[Santa]

It's not an April fools prank.

http://www.pnas.org/content/111/45/16106.abstract

Chlorovirus ATCV-1 is part of the human oropharyngeal virome and is associated with changes in cognitive functions in humans and mice

Significance

Human mucosal surfaces contain a wide range of microorganisms. The biological effects of these organisms are largely unknown. Large-scale metagenomic sequencing is emerging as a method to identify novel microbes. Unexpectedly, we identified DNA sequences homologous to virus ATCV-1, an algal virus not previously known to infect humans, in oropharyngeal samples obtained from healthy adults. The presence of ATCV-1 was associated with a modest but measurable decrease in cognitive functioning. A relationship between ATCV-1 and cognitive functioning was confirmed in a mouse model, which also indicated that exposure to ATCV-1 resulted in changes in gene expression within the brain. Our study indicates that viruses in the environment not thought to infect humans can have biological effects.
Abstract

Chloroviruses (family Phycodnaviridae) are large DNA viruses known to infect certain eukaryotic green algae and have not been previously shown to infect humans or to be part of the human virome. We unexpectedly found sequences homologous to the chlorovirus Acanthocystis turfacea chlorella virus 1 (ATCV-1) in a metagenomic analysis of DNA extracted from human oropharyngeal samples. These samples were obtained by throat swabs of adults without a psychiatric disorder or serious physical illness who were participating in a study that included measures of cognitive functioning. The presence of ATCV-1 DNA was confirmed by quantitative PCR with ATCV-1 DNA being documented in oropharyngeal samples obtained from 40 (43.5%) of 92 individuals. The presence of ATCV-1 DNA was not associated with demographic variables but was associated with a modest but statistically significant decrease in the performance on cognitive assessments of visual processing and visual motor speed. We further explored the effects of ATCV-1 in a mouse model. The inoculation of ATCV-1 into the intestinal tract of 9–11-wk-old mice resulted in a subsequent decrease in performance in several cognitive domains, including ones involving recognition memory and sensory-motor gating. ATCV-1 exposure in mice also resulted in the altered expression of genes within the hippocampus. These genes comprised pathways related to synaptic plasticity, learning, memory formation, and the immune response to viral exposure.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acanthocystis_turfacea_chlorella_virus_1

[Santa]

If it's just being discovered that certain unbeknownst virus strains can cause a lessening of human cognitive ability,
fuck, the skies the limit. Any number of unknown microbes or fungal spores may have long been responsible
for many destructive human behaviors.

For instance, a virus or fungus colony in your ganglia(wherever that is) may be responsible for your getting drunk and sleeping with that fat chick at the party last week.

I mean, who knows how much we are being affected as a species by these insidious things.

[Cebu_4_2]

Ganglia Monitoring System
https://developer.nvidia.com/sites/default/files/imagecache/250-250/akamai/cuda/images/Ganglia-logo-small-rs.jpg
Ganglia is an open-source scalable distributed monitoring system for high-performance computing systems such as clusters and Grids. It is carefully engineered to achieve very low per-node overheads and high concurrency. Ganglia is currently in use on thousands of clusters around the world and can scale to handle clusters with several thousand of nodes.

[Santa]

Ganglia Monitoring System
https://developer.nvidia.com/sites/default/files/imagecache/250-250/akamai/cuda/images/Ganglia-logo-small-rs.jpg
Ganglia is an open-source scalable distributed monitoring system for high-performance computing systems such as clusters and Grids. It is carefully engineered to achieve very low per-node overheads and high concurrency. Ganglia is currently in use on thousands of clusters around the world and can scale to handle clusters with several thousand of nodes.

Good to know, though I was specifically referring to the cranial nerve ganglia, or the parasympathetic nervous system (abbreviated PN to avoid confusion with the peripheral nervous system (PNS), which is one of the two divisions of the autonomic nervous system, the other being the sympathetic nervous system.[1] The autonomic nervous system is responsible for regulating the body's unconscious actions. The parasympathetic system is responsible for stimulation of "rest-and-digest" or "feed and breed"[2] activities that occur when the body is at rest, especially after eating, including sexual arousal, salivation, lacrimation (tears), urination, digestion and defecation. Its action is described as being complementary to that of the sympathetic nervous system, which is responsible for stimulating activities associated with the fight-or-flight response. :D

[singular_me]

I seriously question this OP, could be just another DSM fraud. How about big pharma making people stupid?

---------------
More than two thirds of people taking antidepressants ‘may NOT actually have depression’: Doctors discover many do not meet the official criteria
Saturday 4th April 2015
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-3024604/More-two-thirds-people-taking-antidepressants-NOT-actually-depression-Doctors-discover-not-meet-official-criteria.html

[osoab]

I seriously question this OP, could be just another DSM fraud. How about big pharma making people stupid?

---------------
More than two thirds of people taking antidepressants ‘may NOT actually have depression’: Doctors discover many do not meet the official criteria
Saturday 4th April 2015
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-3024604/More-two-thirds-people-taking-antidepressants-NOT-actually-depression-Doctors-discover-not-meet-official-criteria.html

Sometimes you should question what you are questioning.

[singular_me]

Based on all the frauds out there, questioning the OP is normal as big pharma and DSM are both conspiracy facts


Sometimes you should question what you are questioning.

not to mention
http://www.thedailysheeple.com/common-core-education-the-insane-bottom-line_042015

we shouldnt leave out that the environment makes people stupid-er

[Serpo]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=68&v=0p8qMGixi_w

[Neuro]

I seriously question this OP, could be just another DSM fraud.
If you read the paper you can see that the scientists themselves question the results. They state that causation isn't established, it is the normal scientific process to do so. A good scientist is humble to the results found and tries to find angles that poses serious challenges to the apparent results.

[singular_me]

humble scientists... the same working for big pharma ???

I understand what you are saying but the mainstream medical environment is treacherous to the extreme, so why on earth could we be thinking that they are honest for once?



If you read the paper you can see that the scientists themselves question the results. They state that causation isn't established, it is the normal scientific process to do so. A good scientist is humble to the results found and tries to find angles that poses serious challenges to the apparent results.

[Neuro]

humble scientists... the same working for big pharma ???

I understand what you are saying but the mainstream medical environment is treacherous to the extreme, so why on earth could we be thinking that they are honest for once?
First of all you don't have any patented pharmaceutical drug involved in this research, second they expressed serious doubt to the significance of the finding. IOW a) they don't try and sell a drug or discredit a non-pharmaceutical treatment b) they are humble.

With 99% certainty they don't work for big pharma...

[singular_me]

history tells us to remain suspicious about any viruses discovered or their cures... too many pediatrics affiliations, I'd bet they are pro-vaccines

all government sponsored most likely
-------------------------------------

Authors

Robert H. Yolken
aStanley Division of Developmental Neurovirology, Department of Pediatrics,
Lorraine Jones-Brando
aStanley Division of Developmental Neurovirology, Department of Pediatrics,
David D. Dunigan
bNebraska Center for Virology and Department of Plant Pathology, University of Nebraska, Lincoln, NE 68583-0900; and
Geetha Kannan
cDepartment of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, and
Faith Dickerson
dDepartment of Psychology, Sheppard Pratt Health System, Baltimore, MD 21205
Emily Severance
aStanley Division of Developmental Neurovirology, Department of Pediatrics,
Sarven Sabunciyan
aStanley Division of Developmental Neurovirology, Department of Pediatrics,
C. Conover Talbot, Jr.
eInstitute for Basic Biomedical Sciences, Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, Baltimore, MD 21205;
Emese Prandovszky
aStanley Division of Developmental Neurovirology, Department of Pediatrics,
James R. Gurnon
bNebraska Center for Virology and Department of Plant Pathology, University of Nebraska, Lincoln, NE 68583-0900; and
Irina V. Agarkova
bNebraska Center for Virology and Department of Plant Pathology, University of Nebraska, Lincoln, NE 68583-0900; and
Flora Leister
aStanley Division of Developmental Neurovirology, Department of Pediatrics,
Kristin L. Gressitt
aStanley Division of Developmental Neurovirology, Department of Pediatrics,
Ou Chen
aStanley Division of Developmental Neurovirology, Department of Pediatrics,
Bryan Deuber
aStanley Division of Developmental Neurovirology, Department of Pediatrics,
Fangrui Ma
bNebraska Center for Virology and Department of Plant Pathology, University of Nebraska, Lincoln, NE 68583-0900; and
Mikhail V. Pletnikov
cDepartment of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, and
James L. Van Etten
bNebraska Center for Virology and Department of Plant Pathology, University of Nebraska, Lincoln, NE 68583-0900; and

http://www.pnas.org/content/111/45/16106.abstract

First of all you don't have any patented pharmaceutical drug involved in this research, second they expressed serious doubt to the significance of the finding. IOW a) they don't try and sell a drug or discredit a non-pharmaceutical treatment b) they are humble

[Neuro]

What I would be most worried about is if this virus can actually make you stupid, if so it would be distributed to everyone outside the ruling elite...

[Cebu_4_2]

What I would be most worried about is if this virus can actually make you stupid, if so it would be distributed to everyone outside the ruling elite...

It already has been.

[BarnkleBob]

Sounds to me that the Gnostic "Archons" are actually parasites & viruses that hijack a human beings mental faculties!

WHAT IS AN ARCHON?

http://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/vida_alien/alien_archons02.htm

[singular_me]

we found virus that makes people stupid and it is spreading... LOL

meanwhile TV/movies, celebrity cult, porn, GMOs, big pharma are working a lot on dumbing down people... but thats virus that does it. A bio-psychic one, that one is for real

[Neuro]

we found virus that makes people stupid and it is spreading... LOL

meanwhile TV/movies, celebrity cult, porn, GMOs, big pharma are working a lot on dumbing down people... but thats virus that does it. A bio-psychic one, that one is for real
You have a very good point! It is not unlikely that the research is totally fake. Somehow it doesn't pass the smell test!

[Santa]

You have a very good point! It is not unlikely that the research is totally fake. Somehow it doesn't pass the smell test!

I can't say whether the research itself is fake or not, but I can point out that the journalistic reportage, such as, "half the population already has it" smacks of political hyperbole.

It's also quite likely that the research is funded by and for political/economic interests. For the sake of future plausible deniability.

Any way I look at it though, whether it's a real concern or not, doesn't look like a particularly good thing for humanity.

Perhaps the academsters will soon be coming out with a new designer drug that protects us all from our increasing stupidity.

[singular_me]

additionally, a study drawing a conclusion based on 100 subjects/people...

[BarnkleBob]

If one researches the subject matter, one will discover from many medical researchers that not only do visuses alter human consciousness, but also various parasites... The common cold, influenza, etc. also influence mental faculties but not to the degree that some virus & parasites do....

IF we consider that everything in this reality is transmitting & receiving information then the virus & parasite research is prolly spot on... The light from the sun, our nearest star is transmitting information that our 5 senses interpret as heat or lack thereof... just exactly WHY parasites, viruses & dis-ease EXIST in a reality that is constantly updating itself to operate with greater & greater efficiency has NOT as yet been explained... However, it would appear that some of these altering invaders MAY play a crucial role in enhancing the mammilian animal kingdoms mental faculties to the "elect" few, while at the same time the invaders provide negative effects upon the weakest members of the animal kingdom....

Lets us consider many of the religious texts from antiquity.... these writs from all over the world state "the flesh is weak." We have been programmed to interpret this as "mental weakness" regarding the 7 deadly sins.... but that is NOT what the texts say! The texts specify "the FLESH is WEAK," not the "MIND is WEAK!".....

One may easily interpret that the initiate into the doctrine must overcome the invaders influences over the flesh that is weak... also not that special diets may have been introduced as evidenced in, among others the Hebrew Bible @ Leviticus... there just may be more to "Kosher" than we realize.... special diets and cooking instructions may be found in most religions...