Viral

If your alertness and reaction time is see-sawing more than usual, you may be more at risk of a viral illness.

They determined the presence of viral infection and the quantity of virus in the fluid by growing the virus in a cell culture. The study was part of a project funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency to discover whether it was possible to predict susceptibility to illness in soldiers. "Traditional clinical cognitive assessments that look at raw scores in a single time point often do not provide a true picture of brain health," said P. The team studied a cohort of 18 healthy volunteers who took brain performance tests three times per day for three days and then were exposed to a cold virus known as human rhinovirus. The team wanted to measure cognitive function and explore whether it was predictive of immune performance after exposure to a respiratory virus. Subtle variations in every day cognitive performance can signal changes in brain states that are known to increase the risk of illness such as stress, fatigue and poor sleep.