I highly recommend checking out this excellent interview with one of my favorite lecturers, Robert Sapolsky. He discusses fascinating ways different parasites like toxoplasma gondii are able to take control of behavior via some surprising neurological mechanisms.
It appears that the toxo parasite makes rats sexually attracted to the scent of cat urine, increasing the odds the rat will end up inside a cat, where the toxo parasite can reproduce in the cat’s stomach. He then discusses the genome of the toxo parasite and how it relates to dopamine, allowing it to influence the rat’s reward system. He also considers new research on how toxoplasmosis might influence human behavior, including possible links with impulsivity and schizophrenia.
Finally he mentions his recent research on how chronic stress may cause accelerated telomere aging on the chromosomes of baboons.
