Researchers at Columbia University’s Zuckerman Institute have discovered that the brain has an astonishing ability to regulate the immune system. This study, conducted in mice, revealed that the brain can both detect inflammation and modulate the immune response, either ramping it up or suppressing it as needed. This finding could pave the way for new therapies to treat a range of diseases where the immune system becomes overactive or dysregulated. The researchers were driven by a fundamental question: to what extent does the brain control the body’s immune responses? The motivation stemmed fr…