Jul 30, 2025

The brain deploys immune cells at the mere sight of sickness

Nature readers, in a recent study, it was found that the brain activates an immune response upon seeing a sick person. Volunteers viewed human avatars with illness symptoms using virtual reality headsets, prompting the brain’s ‘salience network’ to kickstart a response similar to an actual infection. This activation led to a surge in innate lymphoid cells, the body’s first line of defense against threats. Dive deeper into this fascinating discovery and more in the latest Nature Neuroscience paper.

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