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Researchers Find Further Evidence That Schizophrenia Is Connected to Our Guts
- threatofrain 8y agoWould be curious to see if some kind of gut bacteria intervention could ameliorate symptoms.
- flatfilefan 8y agoEven if correlation doesn’t imply causation maybe there’s that link in this case as they have done a controlled experiment. They seem to just have stopped short of claiming that schizophrenia is caused by a bacterial gut infection. I wonder why they didn’t claim that?
- rorykoehler 8y agoProbably because it's only a comorbidity. We seem to want easy answers to all these question but the reality is that humans are complex organisms. Having one issue (i.e. an infection) without another (i.e. some specific genetic corruption) will not result in the individual developing a disease however the combination of 2 or more factors results in the development of a disease.
- DanBC 8y agoPeople with schizophrenia get put on anti-psychotic medication. One of the side-effects is significant weight gain. It's likely that this weight gain is affecting gut-microbiome. It's nice to see they're being a bit cautious.
- masonic 8y agoAre there any really, really extra-sane people to serve as fecal donors?
- bitxbitxbitcoin 8y agoIn the future I'm guessing fecal donors could become a thing like plasma donors are - as in it could become a paid "side hustle?" These sane, rational folk should surely flock to that opportunity!
- skohan 8y agoFrom what I understand about Schizophrenia, I would expect limited potential here at best. The schizophrenic brain is structurally different: for instance the hippocampus of schizophrenic people is disorganized, and schizophrenic people have less gray matter than neurotypical people. It's plausible that to some degree these changes could be reversed to some degree long term of they're the result of a tonic stress from the gut biome, and it's also possible that acute schizophrenic episodes could be ameliorated if it turns out they're triggered by the gut, but it's highly unlikely that replacing the gut biome of a schizophrenic person would give you a neurotypical person. The other thing about schizophrenia is that people usually develop the disorder in their late teens or early 20s with an acute episode. If there is indeed a link to gut bacteria, and if you could identify pre-symptomatic, high-risk individuals, I would imagine this could create a very compelling vector for preventative treatment.
- _bxg1 8y agoAs someone with both IBS and anxiety, this is slightly scary
- afturner 8y agoI have suspected IBS and suspected Borderline (diagnosed MDD and Anxiety) and I swear to god my stomach health is related to my mental health. Correlated, perhaps, but there's definitely some sort of relation based on my experience. ps; probiotic yogurt makes me very happy
- macawfish 8y agoBorderline is rough. I feel for you!
- _bxg1 8y agoSame with the yogurt; I'm actually planning to start taking probiotic supplements to simplify that aspect, as well as a fiber source called phylum husk. Sorry to hear about the Borderline. Just remember that mental health diagnoses are less rigid than traditional medical diagnoses. You've heard of mind over matter; mind over mind is even more effective.
- thaisan 8y agoTake a look at VSL #3, a heavy duty probiotic. Also, check out partially hydrolyzed guar gum which has some promise for IBS. It is a prebiotic fiber (feeds your beneficial bacteria) and also like psyllium husk does not produce a lot of gas which is bad for IBS. Hope you feel better! :)
- TheSpiceIsLife 8y agoI take a fibre powder I make myself, but there are premixed versions: Rice bran, oat bran, psyllium husk, ground linseed, and slippery elm powder. Typically equal proportions, but it varies depending on how much of what I’ve got left when it goes in to the mixing bowl. I also regularly buy not continuously take a priobiotic and / or Greek style unsweetened yogurt. Lots of Vitamin D. I also need to supplement essential fatty acids or my skin tears at the edges of my nails. Plus running and lifting heavy things. Also dogs. My dogs are well trained, they know our routines, and they make me laugh out load a lot!
- bent-wire 8y agoI can't wait until this latest probiotics health fad blows over. The previous gluten bogeyman must have been getting old.
- bent-wire 8y ago>As someone with ... anxiety, this is slightly scary I hope this is satire.
- myth_drannon 8y agoThe next possible conclusion can be that antibiotics cause schizophrenia.
- colordrops 8y agoI fear the incoming online information war between everyone and anti-antibioxxers.
- macawfish 8y agoAnti-antibioxxers? Have you been reading quackwatch on the wayback machine again?
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- wolco 8y agoThey can depending on the class. Fluoroquinolones yes. Penicillins not likely.
- simplecomplex 8y agoIs there a link between gut bacteria and diet?
- DoreenMichele 8y agoIs there a link between gut bacteria and diet? Yes. There are lots of articles (based on studies) on this. For example: https://www.bing.com/search?q=diet+gut+microbiome+tribal+study&qs=n&form=QBRE&scope=web&pc=EMMX20&sp=-1&pq=diet+gut+microbiome+tribal+study&sc=0-32&sk=&cvid=121BA76B8F444CF89307D3C33612C623 https://www.bing.com/search?q=diet+gut+microbiome+tribal+stu...
- Nomentatus 8y agoOne nice experiment showed the big difference biota make may be choline absorption. https://medium.com/@russjj/choline-is-it-the-key-to-modern-illnesses-5da8f831a04b https://medium.com/@russjj/choline-is-it-the-key-to-modern-i...
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- pizza 8y agoThis is only tangentially related but has anyone here read the book 'The Fiber Menace', and if so, what are your thoughts?
- Haga 8y agoI know this is dangerous close to the nature /nurture no-man's land but my own pet theory is that schizophrenia is a loop deformation. Every habitat swings, as in the circumstances are unstable going from a plenty of food to no food, zero disease to plague, nil predation to over predation. All this happens in evolutionary short time, meaning it should be invisible to the blind and deaf process that stupidly adapts to whatever is not worst enough for the circumstances. I found that schizophrenia beeing one of these specializations to a swinging habitat, as a theory, had a lot of explanationary power. Unfortunately it has sad implications. If you are adapted to circumstances, it makes only sence to prolong these circumstances. If the habitat swings back, the dormant version will lie in wait looking for epi genetic triggers, that allow this loop adaption to pre-emptive return and attempt to spread displacing other loop adaption. I do not know if a discussion on this can remain civilised.
- ralusek 8y agoI knew it! The CIA really has been fiddling with my guts when I sleep! Just wait until the aliens in my teeth hear about this.
- BenMorganIO 8y agoI'm genuinely curious what yogurt might do to someone with schizophrenia. I also wonder what their dairy consumption looks like and their diet to see if there's relations. There's also genetic relations with schizophrenia. I've always wondered if these had to do with nature or nurture. Often studies simply say they check a person's mental health background. Is it really genetic? Perhaps it could also be what gets taught and passed down to us or the home we live in. Perhaps the mental illnesses that our society experiences is nothing more than poorly regulated drinking water, mold in the walls, a bad diet, Mom's spaghetti, or spices that don't agree with us. I find this research very interesting. The bacteria change could be a side effect of something but since the bacteria is atypical, it leads to a very interesting question: How did it get there? What foods carry this bacteria? Does this bacteria kill other healthy bacteria? Does it serve a purpose? I'm not a biology specialist, but I would love to know if nutrition is related.
- woolvalley 8y agoI'm guessing it's an interaction between your genetics and how you react to food. Just like how some people are more prone to diabetes or don't every really get fat and don't manage their diets consciously.
- justanotherjoe 8y agoAre you implying that people who dont really get fat, who dont manage their diet consciously, are more prone to diabetes? I never heard of this...
- skohan 8y agoI think they were giving the example that given the same diet, one person might develop diabetes while another would maintain a healthy weight due to predisposing genetic factors. But actually it does seem to be the case that the ability to put on fat is in some ways protective against diabetes. In other words, people that easily store calories as fat don't have the metabolic problems associated with diabetes, since their body is able to effectively store any extra calories they take in. Diabetes develops in individuals who are not effective at converting excess sugar in their blood stream into fat, so instead they suffer metabolic damage. That's not to say that they don't put on fat, but if you see someone who has an enormous amount of excess fat, they are likely to have a much higher threshold before they develop the disease.
- moh_maya 8y agoThere is good reason to be skeptical of the claims in the article. This twitter thread [1] is a good, articulate criticism of the issues around the paper. To quote a segment from the series of tweets by the author, Kevin Mitchell (a neurogeneticist from Trinity College, Dublin)[2] : "1. A supposed mechanism in search of a phenomenon... (What is the microbiome supposed to explain here?) 2. No actual mechanism. 3. No actual findings. Just lots of exploratory blips, unconstrained by prior hypotheses, uncorrected for multiple tests, and unreplicated. 4. Massive hype. Just because the genetics of complex disorders is complex and just because the neuroscience of the highest functions of the human mind is complex, doesn't mean we need to go looking for new kinds of biology to explain them" [1] https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1095012297200844800.html https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1095012297200844800.html [2] https://www.kjmitchell.com/ https://www.kjmitchell.com/ [edit: formatting]
- behindmyscreen 8y agoI think the most obvious question is “does schizophrenia cause an abnormal gut microbiome or does an abnormal gut microbiome causes schizophrenia?” My bet is it’s the former, not the later.
- homero 8y agoDefinitely. Eating patterns, sleep and many other things change. Even medications like lithium. What's lithium do to bacteria? My anxiety makes eating hard sometimes so i eat bad foods just to get calories in.
- Amygaz 8y agoIt is sad, because there is certainly a link, it’s not just the direct one that all academia is jumping to conclusions. You pretty much nailed all those studies. Those type of hard to characterize, very complex, and poorly understood diseases, are the only candidates that you will see a “microbiome can cause/cure it” type of paper. At the end of the day, they see a mouse, bearing a set of mutations that is not even close to mimic the disease population, adopt some new behaviors, and then they miraculously cured everything. On top of that, VC have started to invest massively in that field, even starting their own company. On one side, I hope this will bring some much needed robustness to the current lack of rigor. On the flip side, since the biotech VC model is to IPO whithin 5 years, I doubt they will do better.
- mindgam3 8y agoAnyone interested in a theory of schizophrenia that actually explains the logic behind these behavior patterns would do well to learn about Bateson's "double bind" formulation. Dr. Stanislav Grof's essay "Mind, Nature and Consciousness" provides a very lucid introduction to this theory (http://www.stanislavgrof.com/wp-content/uploads/pdf/Gregory_Bateson.pdf http://www.stanislavgrof.com/wp-content/uploads/pdf/Gregory_...): "The basic idea of Gregory Bateson's theory of schizophrenia is that this disorder basically represents a breakdown of metacommunication [messages about messages, indicating how the communication should be understood, i.e. a wink to indicate that this is a joke, /s for sarcasm, etc]. Psychogenetically, this problem can than be traced to a specific disturbance in the communication between the mother and the future schizophrenic which involves what he called a "double bind.” The basic characteristics of this situation are the following: 1. The child is in a relationship of vital dependency, where it is critical to identify correctly the communication from the mother. 2. He or she is receiving from the mother messages which are contradictory, since the qualifying metacommunication denies the verbal content or is otherwise incompatible with it. 3. The child does not have the opportunity to ask questions to clarify the communication. 4. The child cannot leave the field. Under these circumstances, he or she is forced to distort his or her perception of the outer world and of the inner feelings, and is incapable to develop meta-communicational skills. Gregory's favorite example was a situation in which a mother, annoyed by a child who is active and noisy, tries to get rid of him by saying: "Darling, it is very late and you must be terribly tired; mommy will put you to bed. You know I mean well for you." The message misrepresents the truth about the matter. It says "you are tired and need to sleep" instead of "I really need some space for myself." Messages and situations of this type force the child to deny or disregard his or her inner clues and accept what the mother is saying. Metacommunication is extremely important in human communication and individuals who do not master it tend to have great interpersonal difficulties. Metacommunicationally inept persons who are incapable to read subtle signals, understand jokes, and decode hidden meanings become easily victims and scapegoats of their peers. There has been much discussion, whether this mechanism is sufficient to explain serious psychopathology encountered in schizophrenic patients. Gregory Bateson himself believed that much of schizophrenic symptomatology can be understood as a total breakdown of metacommunication."
- ericb 8y ago
- known 8y agoC4 gene led to a greater risk of developing schizophrenia https://www.economist.com/science-and-technology/2016/01/30/brain-gains https://www.economist.com/science-and-technology/2016/01/30/...
- justanotherjoe 8y agoI have no trouble at all accepting this. Our gut is loaded with neurons. To imagine this, consider that when you are feeling happy, they said its like "butterflies in the stomach". Now consider a situation when someone cannot feel this due to fucked up gut. That on situations when you are supposed to feel happy, you are attacked by anxiety instead, which are also a distinct sensation in the gut. Your life will become a nightmare. I've been there myself, thankfully my gut is good now. On the flip side, there are people out there with super gut, that feel happy no matter what life throws at them. Just a dose of optimism to lighten up the mood.
- frozenport 8y agoIf I cut your gut out with a knife, will it cure your schizophrenia ?
- rantanplan 8y ago> I have no trouble at all accepting this That's not how science works. If something is proven and reproducible via the scientific method, it must work(used to make verifiable predictions) whether you accept it or not. Let's never forget https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diederik_Stapel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diederik_Stapel . His M.O. was to fabricate results that would be easy for his peers to accept. And if we take into account all the dangerous pseudo-scientific hype around the gut(leaky gut, cleansings, etc) we should be twice as careful.
- justanotherjoe 8y agoUnderstood and agreed. This is more apt a reminder in a thread about schizophrenia too.
- mrcoder111 8y agoAnd mainstream people still think the idea of high fructose corn syrup, gluten, etc. affecting mental capability is just people being OCD...
- shenal 8y agoFor those who haven't already read this book Alanna Collen's Book is a good start on the significance of microbes for human health [1] https://www.amazon.com/10-Human-Microbes-Health-Happiness/dp/0062345990 https://www.amazon.com/10-Human-Microbes-Health-Happiness/dp...
- leoh 8y agoWe basically have a huge bioreactor in our stomach. Surely it is possible to introduce some gene into the collection of bacteria there that could cause the production of metabolites that are destabilizing to mental health.
- hjk05 8y agoSo Schizophrinia should be curable by clearing the gut bacteria? Sounds like something we already would have known if it was the case. Don’t strong antibiotics clear the gut? And isn’t the microbiome changed within days of traveling to a new country?
- smolder 8y agoA gut cleared of bacteria is not a healthy one. The microbes are necessary, and the genetic makeup and relative populations of microbes have some powerful consequences for a person's health. Fecal transplants are an effective treatment for a number of things.
- behindmyscreen 8y ago...”if those things are gut related illnesses “ Finished your sentence.
- smolder 8y agoYou're right, of course it is limited to gut-related things.
- skohan 8y agoProbably not. I elaborated more in another comment, but Schizophrenia is characterized by long-term structural changes to the brain. Clearing the gut bacteria is unlikely to reverse those changes. But as a preventative measure it could be interesting. If this theory is correct, there could be people out there who never developed schizophrenia because they did a course of Cipro at the right time and nuked their dysfunctional gut biome. We would have no way of knowing.
- hjk05 8y agoIt really feels like recently someone developed a new method to characterize the microbiome, and now people are correlating that meassure with everything like the probability that people eat green m&ms (no correlation) that they eat blue m&ms (no correlation) yellow m&ms (no correlation) have scitzophrenia (slight correlation!). And publish what ever hits a notisable p-value. But it all leaves me skeptical of everything to do with the microbiome.
- moh_maya 8y agoabsolutely. I think what's happening is the "let's see what sticks" approach. I'll throw every possible symptom and try to draw correlations in every possible way. We can always come up with a hypothesis later. Which, while its an effective way to do science when we don't know what we don't know, has to be interpreted with lots of caveats & caution, and should only be considered to be the 1st step in a long, deliberate investigative process. And that doesn't seem to be the case, particularly in how pop-sci articles communicate the results.
- dorchadas 8y agoWe all know green m&ms cause acne. But it is a problem. Lots of people publishing just to publish (a consequence of how academia is laid out), and then sensationalist media who doesn't understand what's actually being said, or why to be skeptical (or maybe they do, and just don't care) , takes over and runs with it.
- avip 8y agoPeople underestimate the industry involvement with this hype. Microbiome drows lots of water.
- numbsafari 8y agoBut isn’t this how science works? We discover a new way to measure something, and then we start evaluating its usefulness as a measure. When and where we find interesting relationships, report that out, and then start looking for causes. Perhaps the new ruler is broken, or perhaps we learn something we didn’t know before. Regardless, I see reports such as this one as interim findings necessary to either justify or pursue additional funding. VC and SV entrepreneurship is pretty much the same game. That’s why you have the “Uber for X” syndrome. Sometimes it sticks, sometimes it doesn’t. We are all human search functions reporting back to the hive mind.
- rv-de 8y agoThe most direct connection between Schizophrenia and the gut is the neurotransmitter Serotonin. Which plays a central role in the mechanics of the disease as well as in the bowels. This is by the way also the reason why consumption of psychedelics (which are mostly binding to the serotonin 2a receptor) will usually cause bowel irritations from flatulences to nausea.
- HocusLocus 8y agoBlood Music https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blood_Music_(novel) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blood_Music_(novel)
- brandonmenc 8y agoI second this. Great book. One of my faves.
- PavlikPaja 8y agoI don't see how that could be possible, unless it is a transmissable disease that infects the brain.
- sjcsjc 8y agoAnd if it's not the microbiome it's probably something to do with quantum entanglement.
- rthomas6 8y agoTo me the most interesting and convincing part is that fecal transplants from schizophrenic patients to mice changed the mice's behavior in ways that are similar to schizophrenia, as well as changes in glutamate levels. This shows some kind of causal link more than just correlation. I feel like all the comments are ignoring this part of the blog post
- moh_maya 8y agofrom a twitter thread [1] critiquing the paper, by a neurogeneticist [2]: " And we can test them on a whole range of behaviours, without correction for multiple tests, without a hypothesis of which should show an effect, and again without a replication sample In this case, the ones getting a SCZ fecal transplant showed greater activity, but less anxiety and less "depressive" behaviours. Why? Who cares? You can spin these kinds of findings any way you want. We all love a good story." Please read the cited thread. /disclaimer: I am not a neurologist / neurobiologist. My training was in genetics & molecular biology, and I've since moved out of active research / life sciences. But bad statistics and gross over-interpretation bothers me immensely; folks read such breathless reports & then start doing all kinds of harmful stuff because it's been proven! But it's not. It may be a hypothesis (and this report may not even qualify as that). And cruel as it is, we still don't understand nearly enough about so many things in biology to be able to address these disorders. [1] https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1095012297200844800.html https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1095012297200844800.html [2] https://www.kjmitchell.com/ https://www.kjmitchell.com/
- ianai 8y agoOne problem, my cousin has schizophrenia and often seems plenty confident and happy. The only time I’ve seen him otherwise is during a migraine, which made sense.
- ryanwaggoner 8y agoI'll take one well-designed and peer-reviewed study over 100 random Twitter threads.
- stef25 8y agoI did my thesis on one possible cause of this illness 20+ years ago and then never looked at it again. After just reading up on the possible causes of schizophrenia it seems many more discoveries have been made which has only resulted in more confusion and we're basically nowhere near having a clue. One of the most important points that rarely come up in these discussions is that schizophrenia is not one illness but a bunch of different ones grouped together that we haven't figured out how to differentiate. You can find several patients that share very few symptoms. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Causes_of_schizophrenia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Causes_of_schizophrenia
- empath75 8y agoI think that’s the case for pretty much all of the major psychological diagnoses. Depression, autism, attention deficit disorder. They’re as much a disease as fever or a rash are diseases. I think we’re still maybe a step or two beyond the theory of humours in how much we understand the brain and what effects it and how it effects us. We’ll look back at how we’re treating a lot of those symptoms today as barbaric in a few decades, I think.
- mtgx 8y agoMost if not all brain illnesses may be due to high oxidative stress/neurotoxicity and brain inflammation. A weak/imbalanced gut microbiome may be incapable of dealing with that, which is why we may be seeing the "connection" between the two (brain illness = weak gut).
- gwbas1c 8y ago> One of the most important points that rarely come up in these discussions is that schizophrenia is not one illness but a bunch of different ones grouped together that we haven't figured out how to differentiate. You can find several patients that share very few symptoms. Exactly. I remember meeting someone at an alumni networking event who worked with mentally ill people, including schizophrenics. He explained to me that a lot of his patients had extreme sleep apnea, and their CPAPs were turned up much higher than a typical sleep apnea patient. His theory was that some of his patients were mentally ill due to their sleep disorder.
- andrewflnr 8y agoI predict that over the next decade or so we're going to find that almost every medical issue has some microbiome component, just like pretty much everything has some level of genetic risk factor. The human body is too interconnected to expect anything else. I just don't want people to throw out the baby with the microbiome-quackery bathwater that's coming as well.
- moh_maya 8y agoabsolutely. I would hope people don't now start doing fecal transplants for treating depression, or Alzheimers, or schizophrenia. These results, interesting though they may be, are not a cure; they may not even be diagnostic. But clearly, diet, the gut microbiome, the immune system, at the very least, are linked, and linked tightly. So it would not be surprising at all, that there's a microbiome component. But we don't know what it is; how it affects the underlying disorder, and how to approach it for treatment as of now. And as you alluded to with "genetic risk factor"; its well possible that though there is a component of the microbiome involved in the disease; it may not be significant enough to act as a vector for treatment. Or that it is just a comorbidity. We just don't know!
- belltaco 8y ago>I would hope people don't now start doing fecal transplants for treating depression, or Alzheimers, or schizophrenia. Why not? That would be a fast way to find out if it works.
- tsomctl 8y agoBecause if they keep eating a poor diet that encourages an unhealthy biome, they're going to defeat the point of a fecal transplant.
- moh_maya 8y agoAnd you don't know what downsides fecal transplants may have. There's clear preliminary evidence that gut microbiomes can drive obesity. Imagine giving someone who is not obese / diabetic a fecal transplant to treat depression. That doesn't work (the treating depression part), but suddenly, this person becomes more susceptible to obesity / develops diabetes. These things must not be rushed into!
- t0ny 8y agoThe comments on the website are a good laugh.
- amanaplanacanal 8y agoMost of these types of correlations turn out to be nothing. Don't get your hopes up. If a study shows A and B are correlated, it could be any of: 1. A causes B. 2. B causes A. 3. They are both caused by a third factor C. 4. Random chance. 5. Bad experimental design. Science is hard. 6. Fraud. 7. Probably other things I can't think of right now. As far as I know, the gut microbiome is most directly affected by what you eat. Do schizophrenics have different eating habits than non-schizophrenics?
- macawfish 8y agoWould you believe that peoples' appetites could be affected by their microbiome? Anyhow, it's perfectly reasonable that people suffering Schizoaffective disorders might have different interactions with common foods that are considered tolerable by "most people".
- trash_cat 8y agoThere is something called gut-brain axis that does not seem to be mentioned here. It is a relatively new discovery. But this finding, gut-schzophrenia, is not something surprising at all. Gut-brain axis is such an important part of our biology that it's probably connected to everything in one sense or another. Schzophrenia, depression, our psychological health, you name it.
- edhowzerblack 8y agoThis is fascinating. I've wrestled with anxiety and depression my whole life. It seems quite intuitive to me that there is a gut link. I frequently experience "butterflies' in my stomach. I frequently have gas, too. I wonder if I could participate in a study? I'd be happy to.
- bitL 8y agoWasn't schizophrenia fairly recently attributed to an off-by-one error in the brain while deleting old brain cells, taking more than necessary, essentially a natural algorithm gone wrong?
- klodolph 8y agoIt’s a long-studied and complicated condition, I don’t think we’re anywhere near having such a concise explanation of its causes yet (etiology). There are many competing theories each with different levels of support. There is also reason to believe that schizophrenia is multiple disorders that are currently lumped into the same category because we’re not good at differentiating them (similar to the way different types of cancer are lumped under the label “cancer”). Trust the science, but don’t trust the science reporting.
- bitL 8y agoI was talking about this (pruning of synapses): https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/02/190204114612.htm https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/02/190204114612.h... This study pointed out 90+ days of taking minocycline/doxycycline during adolescence "had a significantly reduced risk of a subsequent psychotic disorder diagnosis than did those receiving other antibiotics." - from their 10-years sample of electronic records. I had a suspicion that as you say "schizophrenia" might be an umbrella term for many distinct diseases with similar symptoms.
- klodolph 8y agoBut, is that a symptom of schizophrenia? Does it cause other symptoms? Is it caused by other symptoms? Is it common to all forms of schizophrenia?
- bitL 8y agoFor me as a computer scientist with interest in medicine (using Deep Learning to beat humans in detecting diseases), this was a cool finding pointing to a possible algorithmic reason behind schizophrenia. Now it might be just a small part of the puzzle, intertwined with other mechanisms we don't understand with overly complex interactions, not mentioning it likely misses other, completely different diagnoses sharing the same label. So yes, your questions are perfectly adequate, though for me personally that finding is exciting, as I can potentially apply supercomputing on that problem.
- sjg007 8y agoOne thing that is fascinating is that the Danes are supposedly the happiest people on earth. I wonder what their microbiomes are?