If you liked social contagions, you might also enjoy: contagious social disorders.
An international team of scientists led by Bhupesh Prusty — from the Department of Microbiology at the University of Würzburg in Germany — discovered that in the brains of people who lived with bipolar and major depression, a class of neurons called Purkinje cells was infected with the herpesvirus HHV-6A.
Purkinje neurons are inhibitory brain cells located in the human cerebellum, which is the brain area responsible for controlling movement, muscles, balance, and posture.
However, some research has also tied this brain region to language, cognition, and mood.
(Source: https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/322752. The underlying Frontiers in Microbiology article: https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/microbiology/articles/10.3389/fmicb.2018.01955/full.)
In a better world, there would be a vaccine against it.
