Microorganismos, cerebro y control mental : Parásitos y microbios que manipulan el comportamiento

What if we weren't always in control of our decisions? What happens when invisible organisms take over our brains? Hypersexual cicadas drugged with psilocybin, zombified cockroaches that obey wasps, suicidal amphibians that swim toward the light... Nature is full of astonishing cases in which microorganisms manipulate the behavior of their hosts to ensure their own survival. But the most unsettling thing is discovering that humans aren't safe from this manipulation either. Microbiologist Raúl Rivas documents how bacteria, viruses, fungi, and parasites alter our behavior, our emotions, and even our most basic instincts. Lyme disease and its links to violent behavior. Toxoplasma and its ability to modify personality. The rabies virus and the hallucinations it causes... Through extraordinary scientific cases—some beautiful, others terrifying—a hidden world emerges where minuscule organisms wield immense power over brains infinitely larger than themselves. Fungi that turn insects into spreaders of hallucinogenic spores, parasites that make mice actively seek out their predators, bacteria capable of altering our personality… Animals are the prologue. Then comes what is truly unsettling: how our gut microbiota influences neurodegenerative diseases, how certain infections alter the human psyche, where the boundary lies between the biological and the mental.