Author: Laura Godenick, TICN Program Coordinator
In this article, Ed Bullmore, psychiatrist and neuroscientist based in Cambridge, UK, speaks on the new and somewhat controversial research of neuro-immunology or immuno-psychiatry. Neuro-immunology focuses on the immune system’s effect on the brain through interacting with the nervous system while immuno-psychiatry investigates how mental health is affected by the immune system. Ed relays his experience of how depressed he felt after getting a root canal surgery. He discusses the mental leap from blaming his thoughts for his mood to discovering the possibility that it could actually be the inflammation in his body’s immune system that was responsible for his depressed state of mind. He calls this phenomena “the inflamed mind” and argues that depression could be a direct result of inflammation of the body.
