"The Microbiome in Psychology and Cognitive Neuroscience"

Published June 12, 2018 (this article doesn't appear to have been posted before)

"Highlights
All known multicellular life is colonized by microbes.
The gut microbiome is a highly complex and diverse hidden kingdom that inhabits the intestinal tracts.
Gut microbes are associated with important psychophysiological functions, including neurodevelopment and neurotransmission, emotion and stress, learning and memory, social behavior, autism, and aging.
We call for the greater involvement of psychologists and cognitive scientists in understanding bacterial contributions to psychological processes.
Psychology and microbiology make unlikely friends, but the past decade has witnessed striking bidirectional associations between intrinsic gut microbes and the brain, relationships with largely untested psychological implications. Although microbe–brain relationships are receiving a great deal of attention in biomedicine and neuroscience, psychologists have yet to join this journey. Here, we illustrate microbial associations with emotion, cognition, and social behavior. However, despite considerable enthusiasm and potential, technical and conceptual limitations including low statistical power and lack of mechanistic descriptions prevent a nuanced understanding of microbiome–brain–behavior relationships. Our goal is to describe microbial effects in domains of cognitive significance and the associated challenges to stimulate interdisciplinary research on the contribution of this hidden kingdom to psychological processes."
(my bolding)

From the article, about one of the authors:

John F. Cryan
Affiliations
Department of Psychiatry and Neurobehavioural Sciences, University College Cork, Cork, Ireland
Department of Anatomy and Neuroscience University College Cork, Cork, Ireland

https://www.cell.com/trends/cognitive-sciences/fulltext/S1364-6613(18)30097-4#

(Not sure how to check if the full article is on SciHub - will have a look)

ETA: bit too techy for me to navigate Sci-Hub right now

 

IMO this branch of science is consistently over-reaching. Very little is known about the brain or microbiome. And why do they naturally assume it is that simple? What about hormones (as one example) how do they mediate things?

I have no science background but it seems to me there is a lot more to consider and explore before we go there.

 

I appreciate your position as psych needing new ideas but IMO I would consider it naive to think that they will necessarily investigate this in ways that are sound. The ethos here is mostly so skewed toward poor science methodology even when the subject holds some legitimacy.

I'd like to Edit for clarity: I think more needs to happen with regards to basis anatomy (which is not the expertise of psychs) in terms of understanding the brain and gut and hormones etc before any of this can be used in a useful way to gain new understanding. I do agree though that it is important and that if done appropriately could provide real insights into health.

This is all just IMO and would love to hear others ideas.

 

@Snowdrop and @Midnattsol

Thank you for your comments. I posted this because I appreciate that the authors are trying to catch the interest of psychologists and psychiatrists re biomedical phenomena. I think that is
encouraging. I did also think how some in the BPS field might re-jig this to suit their "theories", which is a concern.

I think Professor Cryan may currently be investigating more about this topic including the Vagas nerve.

 

Also to clarify. I added a post script edit after @Midnattsol's comment (which I didn't see when I went in to edit). Apologies it it confuses anything.

 

2018 Review article; authors include Dr. John Cryan: " Making sense of...the Microbiome in Psychiatry"

From the Abstract:
"...Several modes of interaction between the gut and the brain have been discovered, including via the synthesis of metabolites and neurotransmitters, activation of the vagus nerve, and activation of the immune system. A growing body of work is implicating the microbiome in a variety of psychological processes and neuropsychiatric disorders. These include mood and anxiety disorders, neurodevelopmental disorders such as autism spectrum disorder and schizophrenia, and even neurodegenerative disorders such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s diseases. Moreover, it is probable that most psychotropic medications have an impact on the microbiome.

Here, an overview will be provided for the bidirectional role of the microbiome in brain health, age-associated cognitive decline, and neurological and psychiatric disorders. Furthermore, a primer on the common microbiological and bioinformatics techniques used to interrogate the microbiome will be provided. This review is meant to equip the reader with a primer to this exciting research area that is permeating all areas of biological psychiatry research."

https://academic.oup.com/ijnp/article/22/1/37/5067516

Looks like research on the microbiome is entering a lot of fields. It would be great to see even more collaboration about this and other topics effecting the ME community.

 

sci-hub link

 

Well, it looks from that as though they seem to think they know stuff so . . . I guess in the nearish future we'll be seeing if there is something useful to come from this. I hope so.

 

https://www.parkinsons.org.uk/news/new-trial-test-if-probiotic-drink-could-improve-symptoms

Chaudhuri implicated the vagus nerve in an interview about this.

Perhaps psychologists could prove objectively that CBT/GET changes the gut micrpbiome!

 

You joke but... they will. Some of them will actually argue that thoughts and beliefs do, anyway. And it would follow that CBT would also affect, or LP, or placebo, or whatever (magic doesn't have to be consistent so the details aren't important). Seriously, some people will actually argue that. As their grip falters on the fantasy they constructed, things will get pretty weird.

 

It would be great if we had these magical powers to be able to pick the right lottery numbers. Or, in fact to make the lottery balls do what we want.