Study finds brain areas involved in seeking information about bad possibilities

Provides insight into how people decide whether they want to know what future holds




June 11, 2021

Washington University School of Medicine

Researchers have identified the brain regions involved in choosing whether to find out if a bad event is about to happen.


https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2021/06/210611110807.htm




The term "doomscrolling" describes the act of endlessly scrolling through bad news on social media and reading every worrisome tidbit that pops up, a habit that unfortunately seems to have become common during the COVID-19 pandemic.


The biology of our brains may play a role in that. Researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have identified specific areas and cells in the brain that become active when an individual is faced with the choice to learn or hide from information about an unwanted aversive event the individual likely has no power to prevent.

The findings, published June 11 in Neuron, could shed light on the processes underlying psychiatric conditions such as obsessive-compulsive disorder and anxiety -- not to mention how all of us cope with the deluge of information that is a feature of modern life.

"People's brains aren't well equipped to deal with the information age," said senior author Ilya Monosov, PhD, an associate professor of neuroscience, of neurosurgery and of biomedical engineering. "People are constantly checking, checking, checking for news, and some of that checking is totally unhelpful. Our modern lifestyles could be resculpting the circuits in our brain that have evolved over millions of years to help us survive in an uncertain and ever-changing world."

In 2019, studying monkeys, Monosov laboratory members J. Kael White, PhD, then a graduate student, and senior scientist Ethan S. Bromberg-Martin, PhD, identified two brain areas involved in tracking uncertainty about positively anticipated events, such as rewards. Activity in those areas drove the monkeys' motivation to find information about good things that may happen.

But it wasn't clear whether the same circuits were involved in seeking information about negatively anticipated events, like punishments. After all, most people want to know whether, for example, a bet on a horse race is likely to pay off big. Not so for bad news.

"In the clinic, when you give some patients the opportunity to get a genetic test to find out if they have, for example, Huntington's disease, some people will go ahead and get the test as soon as they can, while other people will refuse to be tested until symptoms occur," Monosov said. "Clinicians see information-seeking behavior in some people and dread behavior in others."

To find the neural circuits involved in deciding whether to seek information about unwelcome possibilities, first author Ahmad Jezzini, PhD, and Monosov taught two monkeys to recognize when something unpleasant might be headed their way. They trained the monkeys to recognize symbols that indicated they might be about to get an irritating puff of air to the face. For example, the monkeys first were shown one symbol that told them a puff might be coming but with varying degrees of certainty. A few seconds after the first symbol was shown, a second symbol was shown that resolved the animals' uncertainty. It told the monkeys that the puff was definitely coming, or it wasn't.

The researchers measured whether the animals wanted to know what was going to happen by whether they watched for the second signal or averted their eyes or, in separate experiments, letting the monkeys choose among different symbols and their outcomes.

Much like people, the two monkeys had different attitudes toward bad news: One wanted to know; the other preferred not to. The difference in their attitudes toward bad news was striking because they were of like mind when it came to good news. When they were given the option of finding out whether they were about to receive something they liked -- a drop of juice -- they both consistently chose to find out.

"We found that attitudes toward seeking information about negative events can go both ways, even between animals that have the same attitude about positive rewarding events," said Jezzini, who is an instructor in neuroscience. "To us, that was a sign that the two attitudes may be guided by different neural processes."

By precisely measuring neural activity in the brain while the monkeys were faced with these choices, the researchers identified one brain area, the anterior cingulate cortex, that encodes information about attitudes toward good and bad possibilities separately. They found a second brain area, the ventrolateral prefrontal cortex, that contains individual cells whose activity reflects the monkeys' overall attitudes: yes for info on either good or bad possibilities vs. yes for intel on good possibilities only.

Understanding the neural circuits underlying uncertainty is a step toward better therapies for people with conditions such as anxiety and obsessive-compulsive disorder, which involve an inability to tolerate uncertainty.

"We started this study because we wanted to know how the brain encodes our desire to know what our future has in store for us," Monosov said. "We're living in a world our brains didn't evolve for. The constant availability of information is a new challenge for us to deal with. I think understanding the mechanisms of information seeking is quite important for society and for mental health at a population level."

Co-authors Bromberg-Martin, a senior scientist in the Monosov lab, and Lucas Trambaiolli, PhD, of Harvard Medical School, participated in the analyses of neural and anatomical data to make this study possible.






Story Source:

Materials provided by Washington University School of Medicine. Original written by Tamara Bhandari. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.


Journal Reference:
Ahmad Jezzini, Ethan S. Bromberg-Martin, Lucas R. Trambaiolli, Suzanne N. Haber, Ilya E. Monosov. A prefrontal network integrates preferences for advance information about uncertain rewards and punishments. Neuron, 2021; DOI: 10.1016/j.neuron.2021.05.013

Wolff Responds: Forced Labor US Style

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BKEc2Hx4oMI

New discovery shows human cells can write RNA sequences into DNA

June 11, 2021

Thomas Jefferson University

In a discovery that challenges long-held dogma in biology, researchers show that mammalian cells can convert RNA sequences back into DNA, a feat more common in viruses than eukaryotic cells.



https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2021/06/210611174037.htm




Cells contain machinery that duplicates DNA into a new set that goes into a newly formed cell. That same class of machines, called polymerases, also build RNA messages, which are like notes copied from the central DNA repository of recipes, so they can be read more efficiently into proteins. But polymerases were thought to only work in one direction DNA into DNA or RNA. This prevents RNA messages from being rewritten back into the master recipe book of genomic DNA. Now, Thomas Jefferson University researchers provide the first evidence that RNA segments can be written back into DNA, which potentially challenges the central dogma in biology and could have wide implications affecting many fields of biology.


"This work opens the door to many other studies that will help us understand the significance of having a mechanism for converting RNA messages into DNA in our own cells," says Richard Pomerantz, PhD, associate professor of biochemistry and molecular biology at Thomas Jefferson University. "The reality that a human polymerase can do this with high efficiency, raises many questions." For example, this finding suggests that RNA messages can be used as templates for repairing or re-writing genomic DNA.

The work was published June 11th in the journal Science Advances.

Together with first author Gurushankar Chandramouly and other collaborators, Dr. Pomerantz's team started by investigating one very unusual polymerase, called polymerase theta. Of the 14 DNA polymerases in mammalian cells, only three do the bulk of the work of duplicating the entire genome to prepare for cell division. The remaining 11 are mostly involved in detecting and making repairs when there's a break or error in the DNA strands. Polymerase theta repairs DNA, but is very error-prone and makes many errors or mutations. The researchers therefore noticed that some of polymerase theta's "bad" qualities were ones it shared with another cellular machine, albeit one more common in viruses -- the reverse transcriptase. Like Pol theta, HIV reverse transcriptase acts as a DNA polymerase, but can also bind RNA and read RNA back into a DNA strand.

In a series of elegant experiments, the researchers tested polymerase theta against the reverse transcriptase from HIV, which is one of the best studied of its kind. They showed that polymerase theta was capable of converting RNA messages into DNA, which it did as well as HIV reverse transcriptase, and that it actually did a better job than when duplicating DNA to DNA. Polymerase theta was more efficient and introduced fewer errors when using an RNA template to write new DNA messages, than when duplicating DNA into DNA, suggesting that this function could be its primary purpose in the cell.

The group collaborated with Dr. Xiaojiang S. Chen's lab at USC and used x-ray crystallography to define the structure and found that this molecule was able to change shape in order to accommodate the more bulky RNA molecule -- a feat unique among polymerases.

"Our research suggests that polymerase theta's main function is to act as a reverse transcriptase," says Dr. Pomerantz. "In healthy cells, the purpose of this molecule may be toward RNA-mediated DNA repair. In unhealthy cells, such as cancer cells, polymerase theta is highly expressed and promotes cancer cell growth and drug resistance. It will be exciting to further understand how polymerase theta's activity on RNA contributes to DNA repair and cancer-cell proliferation."

This research was supported by NIH grants 1R01GM130889-01 and 1R01GM137124-01, and R01CA197506 and R01CA240392. This research was also supported in part by a Tower Cancer Research Foundation grant.






Story Source:

Materials provided by Thomas Jefferson University. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.


Journal Reference:
Gurushankar Chandramouly, Jiemin Zhao, Shane McDevitt, Timur Rusanov, Trung Hoang, Nikita Borisonnik, Taylor Treddinick, Felicia Wednesday Lopezcolorado, Tatiana Kent, Labiba A. Siddique, Joseph Mallon, Jacklyn Huhn, Zainab Shoda, Ekaterina Kashkina, Alessandra Brambati, Jeremy M. Stark, Xiaojiang S. Chen, Richard T. Pomerantz. Polθ reverse transcribes RNA and promotes RNA-templated DNA repair. Science Advances, 2021; 7 (24): eabf1771 DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.abf1771

The difference between ‘woke’ and a true awakening

Sri Lanka Guardian

10:28 PM


by Slavoj Zizek

The supposedly liberal ‘wokeness’ and cancel culture have little to do with awakening to what’s going on in the world and trying to change it – it’s just noise for the sake of noise, while the status-quo is carefully preserved.

http://www.slguardian.org/2021/06/the-difference-between-woke-and-true.html




The usual liberal-conservative reproach to the so-called woke cancel culture is that it is too radical: Its partisans want to destroy all statues, cleanse our museums, rewrite our entire past… in short, they want to deprive us of our entire collective memory and purify our everyday language into a flat, heavily censored jargon. However, I think Ben Burgis is right in his claim that the woke agents of cancel culture are “Canceling Comedians While the World Burns”: Far from being ‘too radical’, their imposition of new prohibitions and rules is one of the exemplary cases of pseudo-activity, of how to make sure that nothing will really change by pretending to act frantically. No wonder new forms of capital, in particular anti-Trump tech capitalists (Google, Apple, Facebook), passionately support anti-racist and pro-feminist struggles – ‘woke capitalism’ is our reality. One does not really change things by prescribing measures which aim at establishing a superficial ‘just’ balance without attacking the underlying causes of the imbalance.

Here is a fresh case of the politically correct struggle against privilege: California’s Department of Education proposed that the gap between well-performing students and their less able peers must disappear. Professors should hold well-performing students back and push their less intellectual peers forward, as if they were all equal in abilities. Justification? “We reject ideas of natural gifts and talents,” since “there is no cutoff determining when one child is ‘gifted’ and another is not.” The goal is thus to “replace ideas of innate mathematics ‘talent’ and ‘giftedness’ with the recognition that every student is on a growth pathway.”

This is a showcase of fake egalitarianism destined to just breed envy and hatred. We need good mathematicians to do serious science, and the proposed measures certainly don’t help in this regard. The solution? Why not more access to good education for everyone, better living conditions for the poor? And it is easy to imagine the next step in this direction of the false egalitarianism: Is not the fact that some individuals are much more sexually attractive than others also a case of supreme injustice? So should we not invent some kind of push towards equity in enjoyment also, a way to hold the more attractive back, since there is no cutoff determining when one person is sexually attractive and another is not? Sexuality effectively is a domain of terrifying injustice and imbalance… Equity in enjoyment is the ultimate dream of false egalitarianism.

There are rare voices of authentic Left opposition to this drive towards false justice – apart from Burgis, one should mention Angela Nagle and Katherine Angel. The only problem I have with Angel’s Tomorrow Sex Will Be Good Againis its title, which seems to imply that sex was once good (not-antagonistic) and will be that again. I’ve rarely read a book with whose basic premise I agreed so fully – since this premise is formulated concisely in the publicity paragraph for the book, I will shamelessly quote it:

“Women are in a bind. In the name of consent and empowerment, they must proclaim their desires clearly and confidently. Yet sex researchers suggest that women’s desire is often slow to emerge. And men are keen to insist that they know what women—and their bodies—want. Meanwhile, sexual violence abounds. How can women, in this environment, possibly know what they want? And why do we expect them to? Katherine Angel challenges our assumptions about women’s desire. Why, she asks, should they be expected to know their desires? And how do we take sexual violence seriously, when not knowing what we want is key to both eroticism and personhood?”

The parts italicised (by me) are crucial: Any feminist theory should take into account not-knowing as a key feature of sexuality and ground its opposition to violence in sexual relationship not in the usual terms of ‘yes means yes’, but by evoking this not-knowing. This is why the motto that women “must proclaim their desires clearly and confidently” is not just a violent imposition on sexuality but literally de-sexualizing, a promotion of ‘sex without sex’. This is why feminism, in some instances, enforces precisely the same ‘shaming and silencing’ of women’s sexuality that it seeks to oppose. What lies under the direct physical (or psychological) violence of unwanted male sexual advances is the patronizing assumption he knows what the ‘confused’ woman doesn’t know (and is thereby legitimized to act upon this knowledge). It could thus be argued that a man is violent even if he treats a woman respectfully – as long as it’s done under this presumption of knowing more about her desires than she does herself.

This in no way implies that women’s desire is in some sense deficient compared to that of men (who are supposed to know what they want): The lesson of psychoanalysis is that a gap always separates what we want from what we desire. It may happen that I not only desire something but want to get it without explicitly asking for it, pretending that it was imposed on me – demanding it directly would ruin the satisfaction of getting it. And inversely, I may want something, dream about it, but I don’t desire to get it – my entire subjective consistency depends on this not-getting-it: Directly getting it would lead to a collapse of my subjectivity. We should always bear in mind that one of the most brutal forms of violence occurs when something that we secretly desire or fantasize about (but are not ready to do in real life) is imposed on us from outside.

The only form of sex that fully fits the politically correct criteria is a sado-masochist contract.

Leftist partisans of political correctness often reproach to its critics that their focus on PC ‘excesses’, on the prohibitive aspect of cancelling and woke culture, ignores a much graver threat of censorship. Just in the UK, we have police infiltrating trade unions, regulation of what gets published in the media and appears on TV, underage children from Muslim families questioned for terrorist links, up to single events like the continuing illegal imprisonment of Julian Assange… While I agree that censorship is much worse than the ‘sins’ of cancel culture, I think it provides the ultimate argument against the woke culture and PC regulations: Why does the PC Left focus on regulating details of how we speak, etc. instead of bringing out the above-mentioned much bigger things? No wonder Assange was also attacked by some PC feminists (not only) from Sweden who did not support him because they took seriously the accusations about his sexual misconduct (which were later dismissed by the Swedish authorities). An unproven infraction of PC rules outweighed the fact of being a victim of state terror…

However, when the woke stance touches on a really important aspect of the reproduction of the hegemonic ideology, the reaction of the establishment changes from ridiculing the opponent for its excesses to a panicky attempt of violent legal suppression. We often read in our media complaints about the ‘excesses’ of critical gender and race studies which try to reassess the hegemonic narrative of the American past. But we are now in the middle of an ongoing reactionary counter-offensive to reassert a whitewashed American myth. New laws are proposed in at least 15 states all across the US that would ban the teaching of ‘critical race theory’, the New York Times’ 1619 Project, and, euphemistically, ‘divisive concepts’.

Are the prohibited theories really divisive? Yes, but only in the precise sense that they oppose (divide themselves from) the hegemonic official myth which is already in itself divisive: It excludes some groups or stances, putting them in a subordinate position. Furthermore, it is clear that to the partisans of the official myth, truth does not matter here but only the ‘stability’ of the founding myths – these partisans, not those dismissed by them as ‘historicist relativists’, are effectively practicing the ‘post-truth’ stance: They like to evoke ‘alternate facts’, but they exclude alternate founding myths.While criticizing the PC cancelling culture, we should thus always bear in mind that we share their goals (for feminism, against racism, etc.), and that we criticize their inefficiency in reaching these goals. With advocates of the founding myths, the story is a different one: Their goals are unacceptable, and we hope they will fail to reach them.

African great apes to suffer massive range loss in next 30 years

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2021/06/210607161000.htm


June 7, 2021
Wildlife Conservation Society


A new study published in the journal Diversity and Distributions predicts massive range declines of Africa's great apes -- gorillas, chimpanzees and bonobos -- due to the impacts of climate change, land-use changes and human population growth.


For their analysis, the authors compiled information on African ape occurrence held in the IUCN SSC A.P.E.S. database, a repository that includes a remarkable amount of information on population status, threats and conservation for several hundred sites, collected over 20 years.

The first-of-its-kind study quantifies the joint effects of climate, land-use, and human population changes across African ape ranges for the year 2050 under best- and worst-case scenarios. "Best case" implies slowly declining carbon emissions and that appropriate mitigation measures will be put in place. "Worst case" assumes that emissions continue to increase unchecked -- business as usual.

Under the best-case scenario, the authors predict that great apes will lose 85 percent of their range, of which 50 percent will be outside national parks and other areas protected by legislation. Under the worst-case scenario, they predict a 94 percent loss, of which 61 percent will be in areas that are not protected.

This paper examines whether great apes can or cannot disperse away from where they are currently found, and the best- and worst-case scenarios in each case. For example, mountains are currently less suitable than lowland areas for some great ape species. However, climate change will render some lowlands less suitable -- warmer, drier, perhaps less food available -- but the nearby mountains will take on the characteristics that those lowlands currently have. If great apes are able to physically move from the lowlands to the mountains, they may be able to survive, and even increase their range (depending on the species, and whether it is the best- or worst-case scenario). However, they may not be able to travel (disperse) away from the lowlands in the time remaining between today and 2050.

Joana Carvalho, postdoctoral researcher in the Faculty of Science, Liverpool John Moores University, lead author of the study says: "By integrating future climate and land-use changes as well as human population scenarios, this study provides strong evidence for synergistic interactions among key global drivers constraining African ape distribution."

Carvalho adds: "Importantly, massive range loss is widely expected outside protected areas, which reflects the insufficiency of the current network of protected areas in Africa to preserve suitable habitats for great apes and effectively connect great ape populations."

Fiona Maisels of the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS), and a co-author of the study, said: "As climate change forces the different types of vegetation to essentially shift uphill, it means that all animals -- not only great apes -- that depend on particular habitat types will be forced to move uphill along with the vegetation, or become locally extinct. And when the hills are low, many species, great and small, will not be able go higher than the land allows, and huge numbers of animals and plants will simply vanish."

The authors argue that effective conservation strategies require careful planning for each species that focuses on both existing and proposed protected areas -- the creation and management of which can be informed by these habitat suitability models. Additionally, efforts to maintain connectivity between the habitats predicted to be suitable in the future will be crucial for the survival of African apes. Conservation planners urgently need to integrate land-use planning and climate change mitigation and adaptation measures into government policy of great ape range countries.

The study highlights the need for urgent action to combat both biodiversity loss and climate change if great apes are to continue into the future. Governments must protect and conserve the habitats of great apes -- where they are now, and where they will need to move. Governments attending the upcoming Convention on Biological Diversity CoP 15 in September and the UN Climate Change Conference in November should adopt meaningful commitments to protect and conserve great apes and their habitats and combat climate change.

The results of the study corroborate other recent studies showing that African ape populations and their habitats are declining dramatically. All African great apes are classified either as Endangered (mountain gorillas, bonobos, Nigeria-Cameroon chimpanzees, eastern chimpanzees, and central chimpanzees) or Critically Endangered (Cross River gorillas, Grauer's gorillas, western lowland gorillas, and western chimpanzees) on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species, and all are regarded as flagship species for conservation.

Hjalmar Kuehl, from iDiv in Leipzig, Germany, and senior author of the study said: "There must be global responsibility for stopping the decline of great apes. Global consumption of natural resources extracted from ape range countries is a major driver of great ape decline. All nations benefitting from these resources have a responsibility to ensure a better future for great apes, their habitats and the people living therein by developing more sustainable economies."

The study involved over 60 co-authors from academic and non-academic organizations and government agencies, including Antwerp Zoo Society, Born Free Foundation, Chimbo Foundation, Conservation Society of Sierra Leone, Environment and Rural Development Foundation, Fauna & Flora International, Frankfurt Zoological Society, Jane Goodall Institute, Rio Tinto, Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance, Sekakoh Organisation, Sierra Rutile Limited, Tacugama Chimpanzee Sanctuary, The Biodiversity Consultancy, West African Primate Conservation Action, Wild Chimpanzee Foundation, Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS), and World Wide Fund for Nature.






Story Source:

Materials provided by Wildlife Conservation Society. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.


Journal Reference:
Joana S. Carvalho, Bruce Graham, Gaёlle Bocksberger, Fiona Maisels, Elizabeth A. Williamson, Serge Wich, Tenekwetche Sop, Bala Amarasekaran, Benjamin Barca, Abdulai Barrie, Richard A. Bergl, Christophe Boesch, Hedwige Boesch, Terry M. Brncic, Bartelijntje Buys, Rebecca Chancellor, Emmanuel Danquah, Osiris A. Doumbé, Stephane Y. Le‐Duc, Anh Galat‐Luong, Jessica Ganas, Sylvain Gatti, Andrea Ghiurghi, Annemarie Goedmakers, Nicolas Granier, Dismas Hakizimana, Barbara Haurez, Josephine Head, Ilka Herbinger, Annika Hillers, Sorrel Jones, Jessica Junker, Nakedi Maputla, Eno‐Nku Manasseh, Maureen S. McCarthy, Mary Molokwu‐Odozi, Bethan J. Morgan, Yoshihiro Nakashima, Paul K. N’Goran, Stuart Nixon, Louis Nkembi, Emmanuelle Normand, Laurent D.Z. Nzooh, Sarah H. Olson, Leon Payne, Charles‐Albert Petre, Alex K. Piel, Lilian Pintea, Andrew J. Plumptre, Aaron Rundus, Adeline Serckx, Fiona A. Stewart, Jacqueline Sunderland‐Groves, Nikki Tagg, Angelique Todd, Ashley Vosper, José F.C. Wenceslau, Erin G. Wessling, Jacob Willie, Hjalmar S. Kühl. Predicting range shifts of African apes under global change scenarios. Diversity and Distributions, 2021; DOI: 10.1111/ddi.13358

Bacteria are connected to how babies experience fear

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2021/06/210604135433.htm




New research from MSU shows that an infant's gut microbiome could contain clues to help monitor and support healthy neurological development


Why do some babies react to perceived danger more than others? According to new research from Michigan State University and the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, part of the answer may be found in a surprising place: an infant's digestive system.

The human digestive system is home to a vast community of microorganisms known as the gut microbiome. The MSU-UNC research team discovered that the gut microbiome was different in infants with strong fear responses and infants with milder reactions.

These fear responses -- how someone reacts to a scary situation -- in early life can be indicators of future mental health. And there is growing evidence tying neurological well-being to the microbiome in the gut.

The new findings suggest that the gut microbiome could one day provide researchers and physicians with a new tool to monitor and support healthy neurological development.

"This early developmental period is a time of tremendous opportunity for promoting healthy brain development," said MSU's Rebecca Knickmeyer, leader of the new study published June 2 in the journal Nature Communications. "The microbiome is an exciting new target that can be potentially used for that."

Studies of this connection and its role in fear response in animals led Knickmeyer, an associate professor in the College of Human Medicine's Department of Pediatrics and Human Development, and her team to look for something similar in humans. And studying how humans, especially young children, handle fear is important because it can help forecast mental health in some cases.

"Fear reactions are a normal part of child development. Children should be aware of threats in their environment and be ready to respond to them" said Knickmeyer, who also works in MSU's Institute for Quantitative Health Science and Engineering, or IQ. "But if they can't dampen that response when they're safe, they may be at heightened risk to develop anxiety and depression later on in life."

On the other end of the response spectrum, children with exceptionally muted fear responses may go on to develop callous, unemotional traits associated with antisocial behavior, Knickmeyer said.

To determine whether the gut microbiome was connected to fear response in humans, Knickmeyer and her co-workers designed a pilot study with about 30 infants. The researchers selected the cohort carefully to keep as many factors impacting the gut microbiome as consistent as possible. For example, all of the children were breastfed and none was on antibiotics.

The researchers then characterized the children's microbiome by analyzing stool samples and assessed a child's fear response using a simple test: observing how a child reacted to someone entering the room while wearing a Halloween mask.

"We really wanted the experience to be enjoyable for both the kids and their parents. The parents were there the whole time and they could jump in whenever they wanted," Knickmeyer said. "These are really the kinds of experiences infants would have in their everyday lives."

Compiling all the data, the researchers saw significant associations between specific features of the gut microbiome and the strength of infant fear responses.

For example, children with uneven microbiomes at 1 month of age were more fearful at 1 year of age. Uneven microbiomes are dominated by a small set of bacteria, whereas even microbiomes are more balanced.

The researchers also discovered that the content of the microbial community at 1 year of age related to fear responses. Compared with less fearful children, infants with heightened responses had more of some types of bacteria and less of others.

The team, however, did not observe a connection between the children's gut microbiome and how the children reacted to strangers who weren't wearing masks. Knickmeyer said this is likely due to the different parts of the brain involved with processing potentially frightening situations.

"With strangers, there is a social element. So children may have a social wariness, but they don't see strangers as immediate threats," Knickmeyer said. "When children see a mask, they don't see it as social. It goes into that quick-and-dirty assessment part of the brain."

As part of the study, the team also imaged the children's brains using MRI technology. They found that the content of the microbial community at 1 year was associated with the size of the amygdala, which is part of the brain involved in making quick decisions about potential threats.

Connecting the dots suggests that the microbiome may influence how the amygdala develops and operates. That's one of many interesting possibilities uncovered by this new study, which the team is currently working to replicate. Knickmeyer is also preparing to start up new lines of inquiry with new collaborations at IQ, asking new questions that she's excited to answer.

"We have a great opportunity to support neurological health early on," she said. "Our long-term goal is that we'll learn what we can do to foster healthy growth and development."






Story Source:

Materials provided by Michigan State University. Original written by Matt Davenport. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.


Journal Reference:
Alexander L. Carlson, Kai Xia, M. Andrea Azcarate-Peril, Samuel P. Rosin, Jason P. Fine, Wancen Mu, Jared B. Zopp, Mary C. Kimmel, Martin A. Styner, Amanda L. Thompson, Cathi B. Propper, Rebecca C. Knickmeyer. Infant gut microbiome composition is associated with non-social fear behavior in a pilot study. Nature Communications, 2021; 12 (1) DOI: 10.1038/s41467-021-23281-y

Laith Marouf Joins Fault Lines To Discuss Norman Finklestein

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tII7ryCIVvI