You are more likely to get a viral disease if your level of awareness and response speed fluctuate more than normal. This is the main conclusion drawn from an experiment conducted by scientists at the University of Michigan in close cooperation with their counterparts at the Duke University School of Medicine and the University of Virginia.
It’s common knowledge that a weakened immune system is the result of factors like stress and lack of sleep. Cognitive function before contact to a respiratory virus was shown to anticipate the severity of the illness, making this the first exposure research in humans to establish such a correlation.
Minor shifts in how well you think in everyday situations might be an early warning indication of mental health problems including stress, exhaustion, or lack of sleep. The researchers were interested in determining whether or not cognitive function might be used as a predictor of immunological performance after contact to a respiratory infection. The results of a computerized self-test administered in the comfort of one’s own home revealed a high predictive value for cognitive variability.
The group examined 18 healthy volunteers by having them do cognitive performance tests three times daily for three days before exposing them to the human rhinovirus, which causes the common cold. The program generated an indicator of cognitive diversity based on the results of 18 different measurements, such as response speed, attentiveness, and quick shifting between numbers and symbols.
To test for viral shedding, the researchers flushed the individuals’ nasal passages with saline solution. By cultivating the virus in a cell culture, they could detect viral infection and quantify the amount of virus in the fluid. The Jackson score was used to quantify symptoms; patients reported their severity of eight cold symptoms on a scale from 0 to 3.
The team believes that by tracking cognitive markers such as typing speed and precision and sleep duration, smartphone usage might one day aid in identifying periods of increased vulnerability to sickness.
