Gut Bacteria Might Guide The Workings Of Our Minds : Shots - Health News : NPR - 0 views
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Turns out you really can have a gut feeling about something, because evidence has been mounting that those microbes in the body may be important for our emotional health as well as our physical health.
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MAYER: We found that the type of community you have, of microbes you have in your gut, is reflected in some ways in some basic architectural aspects of the brain.
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STEIN: The brain connections of people whose microbes are dominated by one species of bacteria look different than those of people whose microbes are dominated by another species. That suggests that the specific mix of microbes in our guts helps determine what kinds of brains we have, how our brain circuits develop, how they're wired.
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STEIN: It worked the other way around too. The bold mice became timid when they got the microbes of anxious ones. Aggressive mice also calmed down when the scientists altered their microbes by changing their diet, feeding them probiotics, or dosing them with antibiotics.
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This could help explain why some people are born with brains that don't work the way they're supposed to, causing problems like autism, anxiety, depression.
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COLLINS: And this resulted in a change in behavior. The mice became a little bit less anxious, a little bit more gregarious.
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STEIN: Finally, these scientists figured out how the microbes in the guts of the mice were communicating with their brains - by sending signals up a big nerve known as the vagus nerve.
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All this is raising the possibility that scientists could create drugs that mimic these signals. Or just give people the good bacteria - probiotics - to prevent or treat problems involving the brain.