Microbes and Our Minds

Normally we look at ourselves and see only one living thing, but in reality we are home to billions of tiny little organisms. All of these unnoticed organisms make up what scientists call the human microbiome, and the DNA of these organisms out number our DNA one to one hundred. For most people this could be a tad frightening but our microbiome actually keeps us healthy, and without them we would be giving ourselves an utter death sentence. We understand that as we develop of brains growing up we are influenced by the microbes given to us, but now scientists are starting to wonder if microbes in our bodies influence our minds and adults. There are actually a number of Scientists and doctors who have conducting very interesting experiments on the topic. Dr. Emeran Meyer claims that he has made the connection between gut microbes and brain functions. This would open a whole new realm of medicine that would harness the power of microbes to treat psychological diseases. Meyer took a total of 60 patients and introduced them all with different types of probiotics and antibiotics then performed MRI scans to detect certain brain patterns. The results were very clear, people with certain gut microbes had brain connections that people without the microbes did not. This then leaves the question how does the brain communicate with microbes in our gut.  Stephen Collins of McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, performed an experiment on mice where he took the gut microbes of fearless mice and gave them to mice with anxiety. Results showed that the anxious mice began to be less anxious and be more gregarious. The vagus nerve was Collins first clue to how the brain communicates with the gut, this nerve is in all spines, and when he severed this nerve in the mice the brain stopped responding to the additional microbes added to the gut.

Microbes of the Plasticsphere

In our world of consumerism we generate a lot of garbage, we have littered our ecosystems with plastic and now we are seeing the affects. The oceans are filled with trash and a large amount of this trash has formed the Pacific garbage patch. This garbage hell covers the same amount of area as the state of Texas. Scientists are constantly studying this area trying to figure out what role this “plasticsphere” is playing in our ecosystem.  Discoveries made last year show that 1000 different microbes live on the  plastic garbage floating in the ocean. The majority of the microbes found were members of the genus Vibro which is known to cause disease in humans and animals. The astonishing part is that scientists have no idea how those microbes got there or if we’re affecting the oceans ecology. The researchers also found that the most harmful bacteria like to live on plastic compared to neutral bacteria. Scientists now want to see what happens when fish ingest these microbes. A few things could happen in this case, the fish could become sick and die, or the bacteria would thrive off of the nutrients inside of the fishes gut. Both cases seem rather scary, unfortunately there seems to be no happy ending to this garbage story. Work like this is helping us prepare for the future disaster of out ecosystems.  We are creating a breeding ground for some of the worst biological weapons, but we are not fighting against man, we are fighting against nature, which should frighten you much much more.

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 Article---- http://www.livescience.com/43650-ocean-plastic-houses-microbes.html