Scientists Discover a Virus That Changes the Brain To "Make Humans More Stupid"

concertina226 writes that researchers have found a virus that appears to reduce people’s thinking power and attention span. "Scientists at the Johns Hopkins Medical School and the University of Nebraska have discovered an algae virus that makes us more stupid by infecting our brains. The researchers were conducting a completely unrelated study into throat microbes when they realized that DNA in the throats of healthy people matched the DNA of a chlorovirus virus known as ATCV-1. ATCV-1 is a virus that infects the green algae found in freshwater lakes and ponds. It had previously been thought to be non-infectious to humans, but the scientists found that it actually affects cognitive functions in the brain by shortening attention span and causing a decrease in spatial awareness. For the first time ever, the researchers proved that microorganisms have the ability to trigger delicate physiological changes to the human body, without launching a full-blown attack on the human immune system."

Comments

Real article is here

[__aaltlg1547]

http://www.pnas.org/content/ea...

It explains that they measured the cognitive differences between infected and non-infected people, and how, which wasn't addressed in the clickbait summary.

Re:First time?

[K. S. Kyosuke]

Cat ownership is actually just a minor factor - the feces of an infected cat are infectious only after a certain period of time, and cleaning the litter once a day removes the cysts before they get any chance to infect anyone. Furthermore, there's only a limited period during which a cat can excrete infectious feces, only a few weeks of its entire life. So the combined probability of your cat getting infected, excreting infectious feces, those feces staying in the litter, and you getting infected is really, really small.

Anyway, I was referring to mental processes being altered by microorganisms that don't get significant immune response, which is what this discovery seems to be about. If you read it again, it wasn't specifically about people being "made stupid".