The influenza fever forces even the strongest of people to take to bed, and hunger gets reduced in such a situation. Scientists’ research has now revealed that neurons in the throat provide the signals of the flu virus infection to the brain, after which the brain signals the person to take rest, due to which the ill person stops or reduces his activities. The effected person’s thirst and hunger get affected as well. As per this research published in the Nature Magazine, wherever there is an infection in other body parts too, the neurons there detect the infection and send signals to the brain.
The brain decides the behaviour as per the same. Harvard School’s neuroscientist, Stephen Liberles, associated with the study, said that it was not clear before this research as to how the brain finds out about an infection in the body, and it was common belief that messenger molecules from the infected organ carried this information through the bloodstream to the brain. But researchers found out that signals passing through the bloodstream cannot do the same as the signals passing through the neural network do.
It has been said about flu in this research that the virus enters the body with the medium of air through the mouth, and infect the throat. The neurons here detect this infection, and the warning of the same is passed to the brain through the dedicated highways from the neurons’ branches.
