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The brain and body interact more closely than traditionally believed.

Physical Inflammatory illnesses can profoundly influence mental health outcomes.

Aging of immune cells correlate with emotional depressive symptoms, not physical.

Findings strengthen mind-body links while raising enduring philosophical questions again.

For hundreds of years, the central nervous system and the body have been assumed to be two distinct territories. The brain was regarded as the center of consciousness, thoughts, emotions, and decisions, and the body was seen as the executor of the brain's commands and the receiver of sensory information. The discovery of the blood-brain barrier by German physician Paul Ehrlich in the 19th century reinforced this belief. This barrier protects the brain from potentially harmful blood-derived compounds. However, to allow the entry of essential substances, such as amino acids and glucose, into the neural tissues of the central nervous system, the barrier contains several specific transport systems.

Even physicians who specialize in either the brain or the body believe that medical conditions affecting these two distinct areas have different roots. The field of psychological and mental diseases was considered totally different from physical pathology. This was, at least in part, due to the unwanted historical influence of old scholars who believed that the brain is the seat of the sacred soul or mind. In this brain-centric view, mental states are solely brain functions, with body conditions influenced by separate factors.

The Brain-Body Connection

However, recent findings in both mental and physical disorders reveal that........

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