[HN Gopher] The gut microbiome helps social skills develop in th... ___________________________________________________________________ The gut microbiome helps social skills develop in the brain in fish Author : shantanu_sharma Score : 135 points Date : 2022-11-15 15:12 UTC (7 hours ago) (HTM) web link (www.quantamagazine.org) (TXT) w3m dump (www.quantamagazine.org) | acd wrote: | Gut microbiome is linked to autism. Eating probiotic | l.reuterinmay may help. L.reuteri does this by upregulating host | oxytocin levels which rewards social behavior. | | https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27825953/ | DwnVoteHoneyPot wrote: | I thought that relationship was no longer believed. It's just | that autistic people may eat differently causing gut biome to | be different. (Sorry I don't have time to source it.) | nzgrover wrote: | When are we going to accept that we are just a life support | system for a bacterial colony? | lob_it wrote: | I guess skynet is just another "Johnny come lately", late to | the party and not biologically diverse enough to be original :) | | Funniest comment tree I've read all day. Faith in humanity | restored from a floppy :p | bell-cot wrote: | Or, for the really old folks - "...restored from a paper | tapeworm. :p" | lob_it wrote: | If you listen closely, you can hear an ameoba laugh. | | If the ameobas didn't have the guts to fix all the worlds | problems, what chance does that leave boffins? Tri low bite | as they might :p | lr4444lr wrote: | Then why didn't they stop up from developing antibiotics? | patkai wrote: | Some say it's a symbiosis | thatguy0900 wrote: | Have to sacrifice some of the colony so the host doesn't die. | Previously they would have been wiped out by the invading | bacteria army anyway | putlake wrote: | Because there are different types of bacteria that are vying | for domination. The "good" bacteria are fine with antibiotics | because they usually only get used when there are too many | "harmful" bacteria that threaten the life support system. | epistasis wrote: | The bacteria developed antibiotics! We just took them from | the bacteria. | ephbit wrote: | Wasn't it mostly fungi where humans found antibiotics? | epistasis wrote: | Penicillin did, but I think a lot of the newer ones were | derived from bacteria, but doing a quick web search I'm | mostly getting potential new antibiotics that came from | bacteria, rather than proven antibiotics, so now I'm | wondering about the actual bacterial contribution... | blamarvt wrote: | I mean, if you dig a bit deeper you'll find all life is just | elaborate Rube Goldberg machines comprised of chemical | interactions. | budu3 wrote: | This sounds like the premise for a good zombie movie. | jjtheblunt wrote: | Aliens movies are similar! | xhkkffbf wrote: | Also trees are just farming us to create the CO2 that they | crave. It's dangerous to look at the world with a human-first | lens. | froidpink wrote: | Also dogs at some point decided they'd stop looking for food | themselves and instead focus on taking advantage of how | insanely industrious humans are | bohmerforever wrote: | And wheat domesticated us, not the other way around. | laverick wrote: | Botany of Desire by Michael Pollan is a great book / | documentary that explores this view. | goatlover wrote: | And cows, so they could greatly increase their numbers and | outcompete other herbivores. | ispo wrote: | We are a system with them, instead. | chippy wrote: | Given that there are organisms that can literally effect human | and animal behavior, in a way the system itself is partly | controlled by the organisms inside it. | | The big ones are toxoplasma, rabies, etc but there's a theory | that many viruses and bacteria seek to control the behaviour of | the host to enable successful spread. Perhaps flu makes people | more social before they get too ill? Perhaps some sexually | transmitted diseases change behaviour to make the host more | promiscuous? Almost impossible to perform any studies on | humans, but for fish... | Geee wrote: | There have been some experiments on megadosing probiotics to help | with social anxiety disorder (SAD). There is at least this one | guy who says it fixed it completely. He makes a megadose by | growing specific probiotics in milk.[0] | | This is different however, because the article talks about early | brain development and autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Maybe early | microbiome disruption -> ASD, later -> SAD? | | [0] https://pdfcoffee.com/experimental-treatment-for-social- | phob... | rootusrootus wrote: | > social anxiety disorder (SAD) | | I thought it was generally agreed that SAD refers to seasonal | affective disorder? | photochemsyn wrote: | It's pretty hard to untie the multiple connections and ascribe | specificity to brain development and lack of a decent gut | microbiome. | | For example, we know pretty well that humans subjected to | famine/malnutrition/toxin exposure/etc. in the first two years of | life, when ~70% of brain development takes place, will tend to | have decreased cognitive function over their lifetime. | | If being deprived of a microbiome reduces the ability of the gut | to absorb nutrients, then essentially a kind of starvation could | take place which reduces brain development, and as healthy brain | development seems to be one of the requirements for normal social | interactions with others, it could just be nutrient starvation | rather than any direct neurochemical signaling from gut microbes | to neurons that's messing up brain development. | sparkie wrote: | Hypothesis: Unhealthy gut microbiome > frequent smelly farts > | people avoid you > don't develop social skills. | rootusrootus wrote: | Some of my most amazing, room-clearing farts have been directly | associated with healthy eating. | TedDoesntTalk wrote: | Yes I'm curious if there is any correlation between smell and | gut micro biome populations. | tyingq wrote: | I recall there's a thing where those that undergo major gut | surgery, which would disturb the gut biome, have a much higher | chance of falling into substance use disorders afterwards. | | Though a lot of gut surgery would be for bariatric weight loss, | so there could be many other drivers for that correlation. | jmole wrote: | You could look at appendectomies, seen more often in younger | people for no apparent cause. | | Granted, these days the surgery is much less invasive. | tyingq wrote: | Yep, also various surgeries for stomach and esophageal | cancers, etc. | wrycoder wrote: | I've wondered whether a colonoscopy (prep for which which | completely empties the gut through the use of heavy laxatives) | could strongly affect your gut biome. | h2odragon wrote: | Wild speculation: perhaps particular foods and the gut microbiota | they promote influence social structures. Perhaps one could | ensure the spread of these feelings via ritual distribution of | carefully prepared samples of some food... bread, say. | | What happens when the magic starter culture is lost and the | ritual no longer has the effect it used to? | ispo wrote: | What is the best scientific article linking brain health to gut | health in humans? | epistasis wrote: | ...in fish. | | Which is fascinating! And we know that gut micro biome has | impacts on humans too. | | But, we shouldn't extrapolate from research in fish all the way | to humans until we can show it. The painful (or joyful) thing | about science is dealing with the uncertainty and knowing that | hypotheses are just that. | dang wrote: | Ok, we've infished the title. Thanks! | | (This was my first infishing but it was easy because of related | practice: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=t | rue&que...) | pvg wrote: | _This was my first infishing_ | | Lies! | | https://web.archive.org/web/20221029231109/https://news.ycom. | .. | | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33388837 | froggychairs wrote: | This headline should be corrected to say that. Disappointed in | Quanta for resorting to clickbait. It's cool research even if | it's just fish! | jjtheblunt wrote: | don't developing fetuses (feti ? fetus with long u?) of mammals | go through a fish shaped stage? | | if so, does that mean what applies to fish likely applies at | some stage in or some way? | epistasis wrote: | My guess is that you are referring to the "ontogeny | recapitulates phylogeny" theory: | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recapitulation_theory | | Which, despite the awesome rhyming phrase, doesn't really | represent reality much. But even if it did, feral stage | development wouldn't be reason to believe that this applies | to humans. | | The better reason to believe there's a chance this applies to | humans, to some degree, is that humans and fish share similar | brain signaling and micro biome products; which may be true | or may not be! It's a big hint of a direction to look, which | is great. | | But even if this doesn't apply to humans, it's valuable | research because it defines what's possible in biology. | jjtheblunt wrote: | ( autocorrect typo above : fetal was converted to feral ) | randomguy12 wrote: | The fact this was in fish doesn't mean we can't use this as the | start of a model in humans. While it isn't a 1:1 correlation, | zebrafish make good model organisms in part due to their | genetic similarities to humans. | | There's obviously flaws with model organisms, as the saying | goes "mice lie and monkeys exaggerate" but zebrafish are | surprisingly good organisms to study human problems. | | If you wanna kill 20 minutes: | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zebrafish#Scientific_research | mistermann wrote: | Conclusions shouldn't be formed in either direction, but | speculation and experimentation can be useful. | rzzzt wrote: | I don't think this is a problem with any of the "inmice" | articles, and they are indeed very interesting to read! The | only issue is that they forget to mention this small, but | important detail in the title. | Xeoncross wrote: | ah, I hear what you're saying. So I need to feed my fish | probiotics so they will have the social skills to interact with | my house guests better. | hardnose wrote: | If this is the case, would we expect to see lingering side | effects in adults who were afflicted by gut issues like Crohns | disease in their youths? | jbverschoor wrote: | So wine and dine? ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2022-11-15 23:01 UTC)