NEUR 1201 Lecture Notes - Lecture 5: Vagus Nerve, Brainstem, Cortisol
Document Summary
You might call this psychosomatic medicine" and indeed physical illness with an apparently psychological etiology is often called psychosomatic". What is sickness: the behaviour and physiology of sick people (and animals) changes dramatically. Have impaired attention & memory: the behavioural and cognitive changes that accompany physical illness have been termed sickness behaviour, sickness behaviour may represent a motivational state responsible for helping individuals cope with infection. Psychoneuroimmunology is a 2 way street: this eld of study constitutes a major advance from earlier viewpoints that saw infectious diseases as strictly physical phenomena. How does the immune system work: unlike the nervous system, the immune system is decentralized. The immune system, in brief: the immune system has 2 basic divisions, innate immune system, adaptive immune system. In phagocytosis, the macrophage destroys the pathogen by eating it: when activated, cells of the innate immune system (such as macrophages) please cytokines into circulation. T cells are activated by cytokines signals are interaction with macrophages.