Pamela Lyon > Quotes

“people are just afraid of acknowledging that this thing we call intelligence which we value in ourselves – all living things have a share of that, in whatever attenuated sense. If we do acknowledge that, we might have to start paying attention to the shocking and horrible things we’re doing to the rest of the living world.”
― Pamela Lyon

“Arguably the most radical revision in thinking about the stress response has been the recognition of the extensive interaction between, and reciprocal comodulation of, the neuroendocrine system and the immune system. The blood-brain barrier was believed to be an unbreachable wall between the brain and the 'noncognitive' immune system, presumed to function wholly autonomously. Although anomalies were well documented - aversive conditioning was shown to increase antibody production in mammals since the 1920s, for example - the prevailing dogma ensured that new discoveries were marginalized or neglected until the evidence could no longer be ignored.
Key to acceptance of immune-brain communication was the discovery by Edwin Blalock and colleagues that mammalian immune cells secrete peptides and hormones thought to be exclusive to the brain, which hinted that the immune and neuroendocrine systems regulate one another.”
― Pamela Lyon