8 ms·
Enhancing gut-brain communication reversed cognitive decline in aging mice
- fnord77 7mo ago... in mice. So if any of this held in humans, I think you'd see reversal of old-age memory problems in people treated with antibiotics that kill Parabacteroides goldsteinii. As far as I know, no such effect has been observed. And this article claims inflamation from that strain, the NIH claims otherwise: "Parabacteroides goldsteinii is a next-generation probiotic gut bacterium with significant anti-inflammatory and metabolic benefits, often reduced in obese or diseased states. "
- vidarh 7mo agoIt's possible the specifics are different but that the overall idea still could work for humans. It seems worth at least exploring.
- fnord77 7mo agoProbably not worth exploring. I've seen "breakthroughs" for dementia/cognitive decline like this for the past 25-30 years. Not a single one of them has gone anywhere.
- steve1977 7mo ago[flagged]
- j45 7mo agoin mice is clearly in the subhead. The connection between gut-brain has been studied in humans, as well as the effect of diet and gut bacteria on brain functions.
- vidarh 7mo agoAnd in this case it sounds like the pathway to determining if this has an effect in humans as well might be relatively short given there is a pool of patients receiving vagus nerve stimulation for other things that might provide data.
- j45 7mo agoVagus Nerve treatments also exist as well and are highly observable.
- maxall4 7mo agoI smell bad data. This sounds too good to be true and most studies of this kind have turned out to be false a few years down the line. Edit: one of many examples: https://www.science.org/content/article/journal-retracts-influential-cancer-microbiome-paper https://www.science.org/content/article/journal-retracts-inf...
- IshKebab 7mo agoIt doesn't seem to link to any data at all so we can't check, but I wouldn't be entirely surprised if they used the "standard" P=0.05. I think for something this unexpected you'd want a much lower P.
- theusus 7mo agoMice mice mice. Tell me when you test on humans
- BizarroLand 7mo agoIn theory you would never test on humans directly. You would go through various order testing and slowly work your way up to a final verification on human subjects that has almost no chance of going wrong and that the worst possible outcome is that nothing happens.
- behehebd 7mo agoWe there yet? > Importantly, vagus nerve stimulation is approved by the Food and Drug Administration as a treatment for depression or epilepsy and to aid stroke recovery.
- inanutshellus 7mo agoEveryone's "poo-pooing" the article because the title doesn't mention mice, but, FWIW, stories of gut biota affecting humans behavior have been documented for a while. Memory gain is noteworthy, which is the article's "wow" factor, but everyone's just knee-jerk smirking so ... here's a few random articles to gross you out about the wild world of trading microbiota and, for better or worse, changing your personality: * "My butt made me crave candy."[1] * "Gee, I'm not bipolar anymore thanks to my husband's butt juice infusion."[2] Crazy, right? [1] https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-behavioral-microbiome/202404/hacking-an-individuals-personality-through-their-gut-contents [2] https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-07-28/faecal-microbiota-transplant-credited-with-curing-bipolar/105541522
- 5o1ecist 7mo ago[dead]
- hbcondo714 7mo agoI would recommend the site https://gutbrainaxistherapeutics.com https://gutbrainaxistherapeutics.com for learning more about Microbiota Transplant Therapy (MTT) and its opportunities, especially for Autism and Pitt-Hopkins Syndrome.
- y-curious 7mo agoI’ll dig in more but my first question when I see this: who are the donors exactly? Like who decides what the ideal gut microbiome is and that John Doe is the guy to provide his fecal matter to the masses?
- ratg13 7mo agoYou either need a lab to test donor samples first, or when this was more of a craze, a popular source of 'donations' for the DIY crowd was young children. If you're interested in digging into the people that were doing this, they had a website dedicated to everyone telling their stories of how they went about their own individual journeys. The website was called thepowerofpoop.com and looks like it's gone now, but is available on the wayback machine including individual articles and images. I would go back to at least 2022 .. I think they possibly got in legal trouble at some point and started taking things down.
- seethishat 7mo agoIMO people should eat more fiber. A lot more fiber. It cleans the gut, the liver, absorbs cholesterol, slows insulin response and makes you feel full longer. The microbes in our guts need it to function. Rather than jumping from one fad diet to another, just eat what you like and be sure to get a lot of fiber each day.
- jstanley 7mo ago> eat what you like and be sure to get a lot of fiber each day Sure sounds like another fad diet.
- nomel 7mo agoThe charitable interpretation is "just eat more fiber, regardless of the rest"
- vablings 7mo agoThis has been the recommendation for general health for as long as I have been alive. Fiber is really important and there are plenty of easy healthy options that are cheap, unlike the astroturfed beef checkoff primal diet
- lelele 7mo ago> Sure sounds like another fad diet. Yeah! A fad lasting millions of years of human evolution, however.
- memonkey 7mo agoThe post is about a scientific study and your response is your opinion with nothing else to back it up?
- mustaphah 7mo agoYeah, it's a mouse study, but there are tons of human studies backing the whole gut-brain connection. There are even a bunch of books on it [1][2]. What's really cool is that the paper used low-dose capsaicin (just 5 μg/kg injected), and it completely restored hippocampal FOS activity and memory in older mice. Basically, that's the same stuff you get in cayenne pepper supplements - pretty easy to get your hands on. [1] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/28837738-the-mind-gut-connection https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/28837738-the-mind-gut-co... [2] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/35210457-the-psychobiotic-revolution https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/35210457-the-psychobioti...
- jrapdx3 7mo agoI've long regarded the great variety of chilis as its own distinct food group. But wonderful as they are for flavoring food, quite often in my home, I'm not sure how much of an effect orally consumed capsaicin has on memory functioning. Conceivably parenteral capsaicin has different effects on hippocampal integrity or physiology than achievable with ingestion. I'm not familiar enough with disposition of capsaicin in the gut to comment further. My question is whether capsaicin passes from gut into the circulation in any appreciable quantity. I suspect it doesn't but I couldn't say I know for sure. I'll have to add it to the already long list of things I need to look up.
- mustaphah 7mo agoChili could work [1], but not too much of it [2] [1] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27079706/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27079706/ [2] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31137805/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31137805/
- ljf 7mo agoNo 2 is a fascinating study! My mother was 'taking' (eating) large amounts of raw chilli as she found it a very efficient cure for her rheumatoid arthritis - she had brilliantly reduced joint pain. BUT after a few years it caused painful and disfiguring rosacea. She stopped the chilli and moved to acupuncture for the arthritis, which worked pretty much as well, but not something she can do herself at home for 'free'. Since she has v low BML, I'm now pleased to see she stopped eating too much chilli!
- riazrizvi 7mo agoGreat info. This is one of those things that it is much faster for an individual to take into their own hands to prove out, rather than waiting for the system to provide us with an answer. Too many decision makers who are unlikely to all be aligned with our own individual interests.
- nothrowaways 7mo ago> They showed that colonizing the guts of young mice with this bacterial species inhibited their performance on the object recognition and maze escape tasks, and that this deficit correlated with a reduction of activity in the hippocampus.
- SapporoChris 7mo agoI suspect if my guts were forcibly colonized against my will that I might suffer inhibited performance in quite a number of areas.
- dharmatech 7mo agoThe book "Why Isn't My Brain Working?" by Datis Kharrazian published in 2014 talked about this over a decade ago.
- hi_hi 7mo agoFor those who may be interested in learning more about the gut and how it affects your body and brain, this is a great, accessible, read https://www.amazon.com/Gut-inside-story-bodys-under-rated/dp/1925106675 https://www.amazon.com/Gut-inside-story-bodys-under-rated/dp... Also, while we're on the topic, if you ever find your self at the other end of the world in Tasmania, I highly recommend a visit to the MONA museum, which houses the Poo Machine. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-11-07/mona-poo-machine-joins-bowel-cancer-fight/9125910 https://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-11-07/mona-poo-machine-join...
- kseniamorph 7mo agoi like how this research (and others related) kind of supports the idea that free will might be lacking. I still keep a pinch of skepticism about this idea, understanding that it's just a concept. But personally i like it, because it even fells a bit relieving... not to say that it helps you abandon responsibility, but it makes your stance on life easier, and pushes you not to blame yourself too much for your weaknesses.
- inanutshellus 7mo ago"It's not my will, it's the will of the bugs in my butt!" yes, very "relieving." I kid, ;) but I see your point. The idea that you might, say, struggle to resist candy and sweets and it's because some population of your gut biome is fighting for its life if you don't eat sugar... makes sense. The idea that "I just cut sugar out for six weeks and my willpower to resist sugar went through the roof" ... not because your willpower changed, but because you killed that part of your gut biome.
- bitexploder 7mo agoWhat is free will? In Friston’s predictive processing framework, free will isn’t a force that stands outside the brain and overrides it… it’s what the system calls the experience of higher level predictions outcompeting lower-level ones. The brain is a hierarchical prediction machine constantly minimizing surprise, and what feels like a decision is the resolution of competing models, where your prefrontal self model of who you are and what matters generates a stronger attractor than the opposing signal. The sense of “I chose this” is likely a post hoc narrative the DMN constructs after the resolution has already occurred.. agency as story rather than cause. There’s no ghost in the machine, just a very sophisticated model of a self that includes the prediction that it can choose. Through the vagus nerve and serotonin availability, a dysbiotic gut amplifies lower level threat and conservation signals, making them harder for higher level prefrontal predictions to outcompete. What feels like weakness of will may partly be the system running on a degraded substrate… the DMN then constructs a story about discipline and character over a causal chain that started in the enteric nervous system. So, you can’t even really perceive some of this. But you essentially can’t overcome it either. The decisions are made before you thought about it.
- behehebd 7mo ago[flagged]
- Metacelsus 7mo agoIN MICE
- behehebd 7mo agoYayyyyyyyyyyyy
- Fricken 7mo agoI got into bicycle touring a few years ago, and it’s an ultra-endurance activity which means burning 3- 4 times as many calories as I would on a sedentary day. My training rides were all local weekend overnighters in preparation for the big 1000 mile challenge ride, and they were no big deal. On the big ride, about 3 days in I started experiencing bouts of intestinal distress which would put me into some of the blackest moods I can recall experiencing as an adult. My whole thought process broke down and I became ruthlessly nihilistic about everything. I was ready to tell my partner to go fuck himself, chuck my bike off a bridge and take an uber to the nearest airport. But then when the intestinal distress subsided I came back to my senses and I was like “WTH was that all about?” It happened several times, to varying degrees of intensity over the 10 day tour. My eating strategy improved and I bought some cannabis which helped my manage the issue and I was able to complete the tour. That was a few years ago and I’ve never experienced the black mood again. It has prompted me to believe that the mind-gut connection is much stronger than we might have been giving it credit for, and if you suffer from mood or cognition issues, big or small, you may want to investigate whether your guts and gut flora might be playing an influential role.
- bitexploder 7mo agoWhat you experienced was the gut-brain axis failing under extreme metabolic stress in real time. 3-4x caloric demand and your enteric nervous system was under enormous strain dysregulation of serotonin production, inflammatory signaling flooding the vagus nerve upward into brainstem arousal states, directly degrading the prefrontal predictions that normally keep your self model coherent and future oriented. the nihilism wasn’t a psychological response to difficulty it was your predictive hierarchy collapsing from the bottom up, the higher level model of who you are and why this matters losing the competition against overwhelming lower level distress signals. The fact that it resolved when the intestinal distress subsided is actually clear indicator that mood and cognition are downstream of gut state more than we like to admit. our gut makes a like 80% of our serotonin or something
- theshrike79 7mo ago"You" don't crave stuff, the microbiome in your intestine craves stuff. There are microbes in there that specialize in eating, say, sugar. You don't give them sugar, they send signals to your brain saying "yo, more sugar" This is why if you go on a sugar-free diet (just stop eating candy and sweets) the cravings just go away eventually. The microbes who keep shouting for more sugar either die away or go dormant.
- Mistletoe 7mo agoYou’ve heard of The Selfish Gene theory from Richard Dawkins but I’ve started talking about The Sefish Tube. If you think about us another way, we are a tube of GI tract that does everything in its life and with its power to simply be full.
- DaedalusII 7mo agoHeraclitus — 'For the best men choose one thing above all—immortal glory among mortals; but the masses stuff themselves like cattle.'
- Aurornis 7mo agoIf this was true, sugar cravings would disappear when taking antibiotics that kill those microbes. The fact that this doesn’t happen should give you pause about this woo-woo theory of cravings. The reason you crave sugar and fat and other tasty things is that they taste good. You evolved in a world where feeling rewarded and driven to consume more of these was beneficial to survival when food was scarce.
- theshrike79 7mo agoAntibiotics don't kill 100% of the gut biome, if it did so, we'd die. It does some decimation, but not a full genocide.
- deleted 7mo ago[deleted]
- ArchieScrivener 7mo agoSo drinking turpentine will cure my homosexuality?
- gcanyon 7mo ago>they treated old mice with a molecule that activates the vagus nerve Anyone know what molecule and treated how?
- rubyrfranklin2 7mo ago[flagged]
- Forgeties79 7mo agoI think you’re in the wrong thread? Edit: oh bot/shill account
- renecito 7mo agoincoming GPL4
- m463 7mo agounrelated but maybe interesting... I had a colonoscopy and had to empty my system. I had 1/2 gallon of this fluid to drink the night before, and the other 1/2 gallon to drink the day of. At that point my digestive system was empty. I will say with an empty system I felt energized and a lot more clearheaded. I wonder if doing this from time to time is helpful to your system, and furthermore if eating smaller portions would be helpful to my energy levels.
- wao0uuno 7mo agoTry intermittent fasting. It's easy. It gives your gut a chance to rest. For me it helped with weight control and slightly improved my overall well being. Later I also eliminated sugar from my diet and reduced caffeine intake to minimum by replacing coffee with reasonable amounts of quality tea. That in turn improved my mood, made me less angry and emotional. I also started exercising a bit. All of that combined increased my energy levels, made me calmer, nicer and a bit more optimistic and happy.
- papyrus9244 7mo agoMost people who fast report that same "clearheadedness".
- robwwilliams 7mo agoVery well done study with a cautious interpretation of potential translational relevance in humans. The paper is open access. The discussion does a fine job of providing a full context for interpreting their findings. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-026-10191-6 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-026-10191-6
- lsc4719 7mo agoYou are what you eat.
- sn0n 7mo agoYogurt and pickled things acquired.
- SilentM68 7mo agoThat makes sense. I am of the opinion that the gut-brain connection exists. It is real in my view. A healthy gut promotes better mood and health. A parasite-ridden gut leads to all sorts of issues, including anxiety, irritability, stress, constipation and its counterpart, cancer and mental decline. I am doing a gut cleanse now to rebalance my intestinal flora and hopefully remove any bad actors from my gut resulting from years of ingesting processed foods. Want to make sure no parasites accompany me on my upcoming medical imaging visit.
- theletterf 7mo agoNow I only need to find out how to use the 387 gut coprocessor in my belly to crunch those floats. #include <gpu_control.h> // g stands for gut
- builderhq_io 7mo ago[flagged]
- iammjm 7mo agoI believe there is a lot of shame-induced ignorance around this whole subject. Culturally poopin' is in the similar category like sex or death, outlawed from most "civilized" debates. But consider how central digestion is to our existence: basically almost before everything else we must consume -> digest -> expel first. You are not getting that smart brain of yours without that poopy butthole to go along with it
- FrustratedMonky 7mo agoArticle doesn't mention any particular foods that would help. Is it the typical, eat more fiber, more non-processed, Mediterranean? And this is just showing yet another thing that diet impacts? A link exists, but no specific types of diet to help with aging?.
- youknownothing 7mo agoUnless I misread, I found interesting that exposing young mice to old-mice bacteria makes them behave old, but exposing old mice to young-mice bacteria doesn't make them behave young. I wonder if there is something in old-specimen bacteria that wins over young-specimen bacteria.
- mustaphah 7mo agoMaybe this explain it: https://www.psypost.org/scientists-just-discovered-that-a-high-fat-diet-can-cause-gut-bacteria-to-enter-the-brain/ https://www.psypost.org/scientists-just-discovered-that-a-hi...