Andrew Huberman· PhD
And it also sends input to areas of the brain that change your perception of the outside world. One of the most obvious of these, once I tell it to you, is photophobia, right? I love bright sunshine, I love bright lights when I want to be alert. But most people when they are sick, when there's an inflammation response in the body, they feel like bright lights are kind of aversive. They get a well-described, kind of classical photophobia. And that's mediated by a pathway that goes from your eye to an area of your thalamus, called the anterior nucleus of the thalamus. Then from there up to the outer lining of the brain, which is the meninges, just over on the outside of the brain where the brain starts to interface with some of the other connective tissues. It can actually create a photophobia and a headache when one is ill.