Tantalizing But Preliminary Evidence of a 'Brain Microbiome' (sciencemag.org) 65
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Science Magazine: We know the menagerie of microbes in the gut has powerful effects on our health. Could some of these same bacteria be making a home in our brains? A poster presented here this week at the annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience drew attention with high-resolution microscope images of bacteria apparently penetrating and inhabiting the cells of healthy human brains. The work is preliminary, and its authors are careful to note that their tissue samples, collected from cadavers, could have been contaminated. But to many passersby in the exhibit hall, the possibility that bacteria could directly influence processes in the brain -- including, perhaps, the course of neurological disease -- was exhilarating.
Talking hoarsely above the din of the exhibit hall on Tuesday evening, neuroanatomist Rosalinda Roberts of The University of Alabama in Birmingham (UAB), told attendees about a tentative finding that, if true, suggests an unexpectedly intimate relationship between microbes and the brain. Her lab looks for differences between healthy people and those with schizophrenia by examining slices of brain tissue preserved in the hours after death. About 5 years ago, neuroscientist Courtney Walker, then an undergraduate in Roberts's lab, became fascinated by unidentified rod-shaped objects that showed up in finely detailed images of these slices, captured with an electron microscope. Roberts had seen the shapes before. "But I just dismissed them, because I was looking for something else," she says. "I would say 'Oh, here are those things again.'" But Walker was persistent, and Roberts started to consult colleagues at UAB. This year, a bacteriologist gave her unexpected news: They were bacteria. Her team has now found bacteria somewhere in every brain they've checked -- 34 in all -- about half of them healthy, and half from people with schizophrenia.
Talking hoarsely above the din of the exhibit hall on Tuesday evening, neuroanatomist Rosalinda Roberts of The University of Alabama in Birmingham (UAB), told attendees about a tentative finding that, if true, suggests an unexpectedly intimate relationship between microbes and the brain. Her lab looks for differences between healthy people and those with schizophrenia by examining slices of brain tissue preserved in the hours after death. About 5 years ago, neuroscientist Courtney Walker, then an undergraduate in Roberts's lab, became fascinated by unidentified rod-shaped objects that showed up in finely detailed images of these slices, captured with an electron microscope. Roberts had seen the shapes before. "But I just dismissed them, because I was looking for something else," she says. "I would say 'Oh, here are those things again.'" But Walker was persistent, and Roberts started to consult colleagues at UAB. This year, a bacteriologist gave her unexpected news: They were bacteria. Her team has now found bacteria somewhere in every brain they've checked -- 34 in all -- about half of them healthy, and half from people with schizophrenia.
Contamination (Score:4, Interesting)
The work is preliminary, and its authors are careful to note that their tissue samples, collected from cadavers, could have been contaminated.
This seems like the type of thing they should try to verify before running around and shouting about possibilities. If it's true that this brain microbiome exists in humans, it's probably just as true of rats, or at least other primates. Get some live samples there before getting too excited.
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After all what DO people expect microbes to do to dead cells?
Re-animate them.
Re:Contamination (Score:5, Insightful)
They are trying to recruit people to research this. It is very important, and needs to be publicized, if only to refute it. But what is wrong with starting a conversation?
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When Jonny was asked to form a sentence using the word dictate: "My girlfriend say, my dic tate good".
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Plenty is wrong with starting a conversation. When presenting a new claim, the claim may persist in popular awareness even after it has been shown to be false - just look how anti-vax views endure long after Wakefield was revealed to be a fraud. The authors have made it clear that their findings are only preliminary, and they were unable to find any bacteria in mouse brains, but I wouldn't be surprised if we start seeing some quacks selling 'boost your brain biome' products in a few months.
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So you think preliminary results shouldn't be published just because someone might exploit them for profit, using false pretenses? While publishing them might help or even be necessary to fund further reasearch on the subject?
In the economic system we live under, there will always be people trying to profit from anything, but should that really hamper science?
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It was a poster session at an annual conference. Very appropriate place for preliminary results which may never pan out to be presented and discussed.
Re:Contamination (Score:5, Informative)
Whoever wrote the Slashdot summary should have taken the few seconds to read the abstract they linked to. From that abstract, here's the author's claim regarding contamination.
To eliminate the possibility that the presence of bacteria was due to contamination, we examined germ free mouse brains (n=4) processed in an identical way; we did not detect any bacteria. The observation that the location of the bacteria was highly specific and deep within the specimens also argues against contamination. Interestingly, there were no structural signs of inflammation in any of the brains examined. It is presently unclear the route of entry bacteria take to the brain, but the evidence of them in axons and at the blood brain barrier supports previous speculation.
Are you knew here? (Score:2)
This is slashdot, even the article posters often don't read the articles they link to, never mind people who simply want to get max points for 1st post!
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never mind people who simply want to get max points for 1st post!
You mean the editors?
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If true, I'm curious as to why mouse brains wouldn't have the same kind of bacterial presence as the human brains. This seems like something that should not be unique to humans.
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"Roberts wondered whether bacteria from the gut could have leaked from blood vessels into the brain in the hours between a person’s death and the brain’s removal. So she looked at healthy mouse brains, which were preserved immediately after the mice were killed. More bacteria. Then she looked at the brains of germ-free mice, which are carefully raised to be devoid of microbial life. They were uniformly clean."
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Whoever wrote the Slashdot summary should have taken the few seconds
Dang, with that low ID I can't make the "new around here" jokes ...
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Whoever wrote the Slashdot summary should have taken the few seconds
Dang, with that low ID I can't make the "new around here" jokes ...
Oh you can. When it's that low of an ID, you can make it ironically.
Science is verification and falsification (Score:2)
However, one should never validate one's own work. You're going to introduce subconscious bias. Same reason you should never test your own code.
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Not in an age were every preliminary grande claim gets funding, while solid, slow and often boring, but long-term hugely profitable research gets overlooked...
In the Brain but not in the Brain? (Score:3)
Got to be careful, they might well be in the brain technically ie in the blood vessels in the brain but they might not be actually in the brain. If they show up in the most in the regions with the highest blood flow, that would tend to favour them being in the blood vessels in the brain and not in the brain itself. The route into the brain, well, that should be obvious, any concussion that generates a haemorrhage, allowing infected blood to enter brain fluid. The frontal cortex would of course be the area must subject to impacts and bleeding and as a result breaching the blood brain barrier.
So say that one small car accident, where you get a bit of a bump and a bit of brain blood leaking but you have a particular minor infection at that time. You could imagine that contagion spreading amongst families with a history of violence, all those blows to the head, allowing more chances for infection.
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Yes, all this stuff needs to be examined and studied and elucidated. But first the question has to be posed, that's all.
You call it an 'infection', and maybe it is, maybe it isn't. Any more than your guts are 'infected' with dozens of species of bacteria.
If you are working in the field, go for it!
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Football players and boxers with a greater history of violence.
You get a microbiome (Score:1)
You get a microbiome!
You get a microbiome!
Everybody gets a microbiome!
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Knock Knock (Score:2)
No surprise (Score:5, Funny)
Of course there are microscopic life forms living in our brains. Without them, how would people be able to harness the power of The Force?
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I do not share your perverted idea of the Star Wars universe!
Good, science as it should be (Score:4, Insightful)
Present a hypothesis to explain new data, then test that hypothesis by falsification.
Showing that there are alternatives is good and correct.
Misunderstanding by non-scientists merely shows schools do not teach people correctly. That's not the scientists' problem.
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Present a hypothesis to explain new data, then test that hypothesis by falsification.
Hold your horses cowboy. You are talking to non scientific crowd. They have already forwarded your statements via twitter and facebook, "Science advances by falsifying data! Science proponent open admits it and is proud of it!"
So when I call you a shit head (Score:1)
I'm being accurate?
Time for samples from some brain surgeons (Score:1)
As long as they are poking around in there, have the headcutters them grab a small biopsy for the study. Get samples across a larger age range of living subjects taken in a controlled manner.
Schizophrenia link (Score:1)
Recent studies have reported some link between schizophrenia and gut microbiota, maybe this could be part of relation.
Virus that makes you like cat, cat urine smell. (Score:4, Interesting)
This virus infects humans too. They become very fond of cats, cat smells.
So we know there are viruses (or virii?) that live in brain without causing too serious immediate damage. So why not bacteria?
In some sense our bodies are symbiotic collections of individual cells.
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That's Funny (Score:3)
The most important words in scientific progress: "Hmm, that's funny."