[HN Gopher] The gut microbiome helps social skills develop in th...
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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?
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