Animal experiments have also demonstrated the relationship between the brain and the immune system. Gerard Renoux of the University of Tours in France found that destroying part of the mouse's cerebral cortex changed the structure and ability of immune cells, i.e., the number of white blood cells in the spleen would drop and the ones remaining would become less efficient at killing tumors and responding to foreign cells.8
The immune system exhibits memory, which is considered to be one of the properties of intelligence. This memory is stored in the unconscious and represents a kind of biological learning which yields, as needed, specific antibodies to fight infection, repelling selectively and for a lifetime the invasion of any alien matter.9
Communication manifesting intelligence has also been found to exist between the CNS and the endocrine system, utilizing the same neuropeptide messengers. Ernest Rossi, a psychologist, has proposed a mind-gene connection based on communicating messenger molecules. He believes circumstances and emotions shape our behavior and health through brain-body influences down to the cellular level.
Just as information from the CNS directs the immune system, it also controls various other body systems, including the endocrine, via hormones and other neuropeptide messenger molecules. The endocrine system, for example, is under the control of the unconscious mind, which operates through the limbic system. Proto-hormones in the hypothalamus are released and these in turn liberate hormones in the pituitary. These various hormones then can activate the different endocrine organs such as the adrenals, thyroid, ovaries and testes. The target endocrine organs respond by producing steroid-type hormones which can penetrate individual cell walls throughout the body. They can traverse the cellular cytoplasm and enter the nucleus where they unzipper specific parts of the genes. The DNA templates manufacture RNA, which communicates information to the cellular cytoplasm as to which proteins are to be manufactured.10... Thus the unconscious mind oversees all bodily functions in similar fashion, demonstrating how intelligence controls this hierarchy of systems.
The same neuropeptides that are activated by the CNS and exercise control over the immune and endocrine systems also influence the autonomic nervous system. This system, which is ordinarily under control of the unconscious, can also be influenced by the conscious mind. For example, patients with chronic hypertension have been able to learn how to control their blood pressure through biofeedback techniques.11... Exotic techniques have also been used in yoga for many years allowing them to learn how to clot their own blood at will, as well as reverse peristalsis in their gastrointestinal tract to nourish themselves with fluids sucked up through their anus. They have also learned how to slow their rate of metabolism to survive for hours in airtight containers on a fraction of the oxygen thought necessary to sustain life.12
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