The creators of the game were inspired by a real fungus that controls insects.
The series of games The Last Of Us and the series based on it tells about the world after the pandemic of a dangerous fungus that turned people into zombies. And the creators of the game did not invent anything, they were inspired by a fungus that really exists, reports NPR.
Ophiocordyceps unilateralis, also known as cordyceps, affects ants and spiders. It completely drains its host and then fills its body with spores. After that, it forces the insect to climb to the heights, where it begins to spread these spores, infecting other creatures.
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Bryn Dentinger, a professor of biology at the University of Utah and curator of the Department of Mycology at the Utah Museum of Natural History, said the fungus is the best known and most common mind-control parasite. According to him, scientists do not fully understand how the fungus controls the brain of its host, although there are theories that explain it.
“It seems that there is a combination of physical manipulation of muscle fibers, for example, growing into the brain itself, which can affect behavior. But it is also very likely that the host is affected by some kind of chemical attack, be it small molecules, be it proteins, or some other substances that ultimately manipulate the brain's behavior,” the scientist said.
Dettinger noted that there are some differences between how the fungus is portrayed in The Last Of Us and how it behaves in real life. For example, infection does not occur through the mouth, and the infected are not connected to each other through the network.
And, perhaps, the most important difference: the fungus cannot infect people. “The temperature of our body is high enough to denature proteins in most organisms, so they cannot survive in our bodies,” the scientist noted.
But there are types of fungi that can withstand fairly high temperatures and infect humans. Moreover, climate change gives fungi the ability to withstand high temperatures. So it's possible that over time, fungi that can control the brain will be able to withstand human body temperature as well.
“This may be one of the reasons we're seeing more fungal infections in humans, but again, to date, none of them are cordyceps. However, it is possible that this will happen in the future, but it is not possible now,” Dentinger noted.
But, he said, there are already types of fungi that can alter human mental activity, such as psilocybin, also known as like “magic mushrooms”. Meanwhile, other types of mushrooms are already ubiquitous in human life. For example, the yeast found in bread and in the human intestine.
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And while the prospect of a fungus being able to manipulate human behavior is not impossible, Dentinger says it is unlikely. The properties of a fungus that allow it to attack an insect host are very specific to that insect and are not easily transferred to another species.
