Amazing stuff!
"Simply seeing someone who looks ill—even in virtual reality—can ramp up immunological responses that help defend against infection. The finding is “really remarkable,” ..."
"... To study this phenomenon, researchers fitted 248 healthy participants with virtual reality headsets and asked them to watch a series of looming virtual faces approach them, some of which had visible signs of illness, such as coughing or rashes.
The participants who saw sick faces had a greater activation of innate lymphoid cells—the first responders of the immune system—in their blood within 2 hours of seeing the first face, ... Researchers saw a similar rise in initial immune activity when they performed the same blood test on people 2 hours after receiving a vaccine. ..."
From the abstract:
"Once contact with a pathogen has occurred, it might be too late for the immune system to react. Here, we asked whether anticipatory neural responses might sense potential infections and signal to the immune system, priming it for a response.
We show that potential contact with approaching infectious avatars, entering the peripersonal space in virtual reality, are anticipated by multisensory–motor areas and activate the salience network, as measured with psychophysics, electroencephalography and functional magnetic resonance imaging.
This proactive neural anticipation instigates changes in both the frequency and activation of innate lymphoid cells, mirroring responses seen in actual infections. Alterations in connectivity patterns between infection-sensing brain regions and the hypothalamus, along with modulation of neural mediators, connect these effects to the hypothalamic–pituitary–adrenal axis.
Neural network modeling recapitulates this neuro–immune cross-talk. These findings suggest an integrated neuro–immune reaction in humans toward infection threats, not solely following physical contact but already after breaching the functional boundary of body–environment interaction represented by the peripersonal space."
Fig. 2: Modulation of ILC frequency and activation as a function of virtual or real stimulation.
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