The Brain, the Immune System & Life's Illusions

The Desperate Need for a Public Health Approach to Criminal JusticE

           When we think about BEHAVIOR and  INTELLIGENCE we think about the BRAIN.

            BUT before we get to the BRAIN is the IMMUNE SYSTEM.

            In the 21st Century, the Immune System is implicated in:
  • Down's Syndrome
  • Intelligence, and
  • Social Behavior 

           It's NOT that the BRAIN isn't important BUT it's part of a MUCH LARGER SYSTEM -- and those other sub-systems largely don't have the MYTHOLOGY that the BRAIN gained in the 20th Century.

            For many if not most mental illnesses, developmental disabilities, brain injuries, and even substance issues -- you CANNOT get an ADEQUATE UNDERSTANDING without understanding the role of the Immune System.

             Where does that leave the Criminal Law?  In desperate need of a Public Health Approach to Criminal Justice.​
A lot of it is about BALANCE -- but BALANCE of things we're in the PROCESS of DISCOVERING.
Joni Mitchell -- Both Sides Now
New study redefines Down Syndrome as Immune System Disorder (2017)
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DENVER – A groundbreaking new study conducted by the Crnic Institute for Down Syndrome shows definitively that Down syndrome can be categorized as an immune system disorder, based on analyses of thousands of proteins found in blood samples.

The study by the Crnic Institute for Down Syndrome at the University of Colorado School of Medicine on the Anschutz Medical Campus was recently published in Nature’s sister journal, Scientific Reports, and was underwritten by the Global Down Syndrome Foundation.

Led by renowned scientists Dr. Tom Blumenthal, director emeritus, and Dr. Joaquín Espinosa, executive director of the Crnic Institute, the research team looked at 4,000 proteins in the blood samples from hundreds of individuals with and without Down syndrome, the largest project of its kind.


The study builds upon earlier research published by the Crnic Institute showing that the interferon response is consistently activated in cells obtained from individuals with Down syndrome.

This contrasts with the interferon response being activated only when fighting infection or a virus in the general population.

The findings provide an important clue as to why nearly 100 percent of people with Down syndrome get Alzheimer’s disease, why they are susceptible to autoimmune disorders like type 1 diabetes, and why they are protected from solid tumors such as breast and prostate cancer.
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Denmark
Infections can affect your IQ

Date: May 21, 2015

Source:  Aarhus University

Summary:  New research shows that infections can impair your cognitive ability measured on an IQ scale. The study is the largest of its kind to date, and it shows a clear correlation between infection levels and impaired cognition.

Disorders Share Risk Gene Pathways for Immune, Epigenetic Regulation

Genome-wide findings add to evidence blurring traditional psychiatric categories (2015)

Aggression, Social Stress and the Immune System in Humans and Animal Models
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1 Laboratory of Behavioral Neuroendocrinology, University of Tsukuba, Tsukuba, Japan,
2 Fishberg Department of  Neuroscience and Friedman Brain Institute, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York, NY, United States,
3 Laboratory of Neuroendocrinology, The Rockefeller University, New York, NY, United States
Social stress can lead to the development of psychological problems ranging from exaggerated anxiety and depression to antisocial and violence-related behaviors. Increasing evidence suggests that the immune system is involved in responses to social stress in adulthood.

For example, human studies show that individuals with high aggression traits display heightened inflammatory cytokine levels and dysregulated immune responses such as slower wound healing. Similar findings have been observed in patients with depression, and comorbidity of depression and aggression was correlated with stronger immune dysregulation.

Therefore, dysregulation of the immune system may be one of the mediators of social stress that produces aggression and/or depression.

Similar to humans, aggressive animals also show increased levels of several proinflammatory cytokines, however, unlike humans these animals are more protected from infectious organisms and have faster wound healing than animals with low aggression.

On the other hand, subordinate animals that receive repeated social defeat stress have been shown to develop escalated and dysregulated immune responses such as glucocorticoid insensitivity in monocytes. In this review we synthesize the current evidence in humans, non-human primates, and rodents to show a role for the immune system in responses to social stress leading to psychiatric problems such as aggression or depression.

We argue that while depression and aggression represent two fundamentally different behavioral and physiological responses to social stress, it is possible that some overlapped, as well as distinct, pattern of immune signaling may underlie both of them.

We also argue the necessity of studying animal models of maladaptive aggression induced by social stress (i.e., social isolation) for understanding neuro-immune mechanism of aggression, which may be relevant to human aggression.
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That Hyper-Active Immune System that may have played a BIG ROLE in your RISE TO SUCCESS ---

May now be playing a starring role in your downfall.

HYPER-BRAIN, HYPER-BODY -- The Trouble with High IQ