Fantastic response, Shane- and bang on. Most of what scientists know about the brain and behavior is tremendously vague. At best, this toxoplasma relationship to schizophrenia is just one clue among thousands, and could be a complete red herring.

I find it more interesting, personally, that the parasite seems to be able to cause a specific behavior in rats (being attracted to cat urine odour) that is beneficial to itself and totally destructive to its host. Humans still have a hard time figuring out whether some behavior is physical /biological or learned, and yet some microscopic bug can make very specific stuff happen that our best science can’t explain.

Your comments really put the study into perspective for me- Thanks!

P.S.: regarding editing your comments- I *think* if you create an ID on this site (with a password and stuff), you can edit your own comments. The “default” way of creating comments isn’t really logging in- the site is sort of considering you to be “casual” if you just type your name and email.