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Tantalizing But Preliminary Evidence of a 'Brain Microbiome' (sciencemag.org)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Science Magazine: We know the menagerie of microbes in the gut has powerful effects on our health. Could some of these same bacteria be making a home in our brains? A poster presented here this week at the annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience drew attention with high-resolution microscope images of bacteria apparently penetrating and inhabiting the cells of healthy human brains. The work is preliminary, and its authors are careful to note that their tissue samples, collected from cadavers, could have been contaminated. But to many passersby in the exhibit hall, the possibility that bacteria could directly influence processes in the brain -- including, perhaps, the course of neurological disease -- was exhilarating.
Talking hoarsely above the din of the exhibit hall on Tuesday evening, neuroanatomist Rosalinda Roberts of The University of Alabama in Birmingham (UAB), told attendees about a tentative finding that, if true, suggests an unexpectedly intimate relationship between microbes and the brain. Her lab looks for differences between healthy people and those with schizophrenia by examining slices of brain tissue preserved in the hours after death. About 5 years ago, neuroscientist Courtney Walker, then an undergraduate in Roberts's lab, became fascinated by unidentified rod-shaped objects that showed up in finely detailed images of these slices, captured with an electron microscope. Roberts had seen the shapes before. "But I just dismissed them, because I was looking for something else," she says. "I would say 'Oh, here are those things again.'" But Walker was persistent, and Roberts started to consult colleagues at UAB. This year, a bacteriologist gave her unexpected news: They were bacteria. Her team has now found bacteria somewhere in every brain they've checked -- 34 in all -- about half of them healthy, and half from people with schizophrenia.
Talking hoarsely above the din of the exhibit hall on Tuesday evening, neuroanatomist Rosalinda Roberts of The University of Alabama in Birmingham (UAB), told attendees about a tentative finding that, if true, suggests an unexpectedly intimate relationship between microbes and the brain. Her lab looks for differences between healthy people and those with schizophrenia by examining slices of brain tissue preserved in the hours after death. About 5 years ago, neuroscientist Courtney Walker, then an undergraduate in Roberts's lab, became fascinated by unidentified rod-shaped objects that showed up in finely detailed images of these slices, captured with an electron microscope. Roberts had seen the shapes before. "But I just dismissed them, because I was looking for something else," she says. "I would say 'Oh, here are those things again.'" But Walker was persistent, and Roberts started to consult colleagues at UAB. This year, a bacteriologist gave her unexpected news: They were bacteria. Her team has now found bacteria somewhere in every brain they've checked -- 34 in all -- about half of them healthy, and half from people with schizophrenia.
The work is preliminary, and its authors are careful to note that their tissue samples, collected from cadavers, could have been contaminated.
This seems like the type of thing they should try to verify before running around and shouting about possibilities. If it's true that this brain microbiome exists in humans, it's probably just as true of rats, or at least other primates. Get some live samples there before getting too excited.
Got to be careful, they might well be in the brain technically ie in the blood vessels in the brain but they might not be actually in the brain. If they show up in the most in the regions with the highest blood flow, that would tend to favour them being in the blood vessels in the brain and not in the brain itself. The route into the brain, well, that should be obvious, any concussion that generates a haemorrhage, allowing infected blood to enter brain fluid. The frontal cortex would of course be the area must subject to impacts and bleeding and as a result breaching the blood brain barrier.
So say that one small car accident, where you get a bit of a bump and a bit of brain blood leaking but you have a particular minor infection at that time. You could imagine that contagion spreading amongst families with a history of violence, all those blows to the head, allowing more chances for infection.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
Of course there are microscopic life forms living in our brains. Without them, how would people be able to harness the power of The Force?
Present a hypothesis to explain new data, then test that hypothesis by falsification.
Showing that there are alternatives is good and correct.
Misunderstanding by non-scientists merely shows schools do not teach people correctly. That's not the scientists' problem.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
This virus infects humans too. They become very fond of cats, cat smells.
So we know there are viruses (or virii?) that live in brain without causing too serious immediate damage. So why not bacteria?
In some sense our bodies are symbiotic collections of individual cells.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
The most important words in scientific progress: "Hmm, that's funny."