Dec 6, 2019 04:10 PM
(This post was last modified: Dec 6, 2019 04:11 PM by C C.)
How microbiomes affect fear
https://www.quantamagazine.org/how-micro...-20191204/
EXCERPT: Our brains may seem physically far removed from our guts, but in recent years, research has strongly suggested that the vast communities of microbes concentrated in our digestive tract open lines of communication between the two. The intestinal microbiome has been shown to influence cognition and emotion, affecting moods and the state of psychiatric disorders, and even information processing. But how it could do so has been elusive.
[...] Focusing on fear, and specifically on how fear fades over time, researchers have now tracked how behavior differs in mice with diminished microbiomes. They identified differences in cell wiring, brain activity and gene expression, and they pinpointed a brief window after birth when restoring the microbiome could still prevent the adult behavioral deficits. They even tracked four particular compounds that may help to account for these changes. While it may be too early to predict what therapies could arise once we understand this relationship between the microbiome and the brain, these concrete differences substantiate the theory that the two systems are deeply entwined.
Pinning down these mechanisms of interaction with the brain is a central challenge in microbiome research, said Christopher Lowry, an associate professor of integrative physiology at the University of Colorado, Boulder. “They have some tantalizing leads,” he added... (MORE - details)
Brainless single-celled organism seems capable of changing its mind
https://newatlas.com/science/single-cell...on-making/
EXCERPT: . . . “They do the simple things first, but if you keep stimulating, they ‘decide’ to try something else,” says Jeremy Gunawardena, lead author of the study. “S. roeselii has no brain, but there seems to be some mechanism that, in effect, lets it ‘change its mind’ once it feels like the irritation has gone on too long. This hierarchy gives a vivid sense of some form of relatively complex, decision-making calculation going on inside the organism, weighing whether it’s better to execute one behavior versus another.”
The researchers speculate that single-celled organisms like S. roeselii may possess some form of cellular “cognition” that allows them to process complex information and make decisions. The research was published in the journal Current Biology. The team describes the work in the video below. (MORE - details)
https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/E8oIitQN2M4
https://www.quantamagazine.org/how-micro...-20191204/
EXCERPT: Our brains may seem physically far removed from our guts, but in recent years, research has strongly suggested that the vast communities of microbes concentrated in our digestive tract open lines of communication between the two. The intestinal microbiome has been shown to influence cognition and emotion, affecting moods and the state of psychiatric disorders, and even information processing. But how it could do so has been elusive.
[...] Focusing on fear, and specifically on how fear fades over time, researchers have now tracked how behavior differs in mice with diminished microbiomes. They identified differences in cell wiring, brain activity and gene expression, and they pinpointed a brief window after birth when restoring the microbiome could still prevent the adult behavioral deficits. They even tracked four particular compounds that may help to account for these changes. While it may be too early to predict what therapies could arise once we understand this relationship between the microbiome and the brain, these concrete differences substantiate the theory that the two systems are deeply entwined.
Pinning down these mechanisms of interaction with the brain is a central challenge in microbiome research, said Christopher Lowry, an associate professor of integrative physiology at the University of Colorado, Boulder. “They have some tantalizing leads,” he added... (MORE - details)
Brainless single-celled organism seems capable of changing its mind
https://newatlas.com/science/single-cell...on-making/
EXCERPT: . . . “They do the simple things first, but if you keep stimulating, they ‘decide’ to try something else,” says Jeremy Gunawardena, lead author of the study. “S. roeselii has no brain, but there seems to be some mechanism that, in effect, lets it ‘change its mind’ once it feels like the irritation has gone on too long. This hierarchy gives a vivid sense of some form of relatively complex, decision-making calculation going on inside the organism, weighing whether it’s better to execute one behavior versus another.”
The researchers speculate that single-celled organisms like S. roeselii may possess some form of cellular “cognition” that allows them to process complex information and make decisions. The research was published in the journal Current Biology. The team describes the work in the video below. (MORE - details)
