When Gut Bacteria Change Brain Function

What happens when Nanoarchaea peregrinus’ food source in the earth runs out? If we are connected, could we be at the beginning of our own version of Colony Collapse?
 
Our appalling environmental behavior isn’t killing us outright. But, what if it is slowly killing who we are? What if by compromising those populations that live in the earth, we are also compromising those that live in our minds.
 
Think of all the mind’s mysteries—issues we work to control, but cannot fully explain: depression, Alzheimer’s, epilepsy. Think of the people dealing with what we call ‘syndromes’ because we don’t know what else to call them— the schizophrenics, the psychopaths, the sociopaths. Could we already be dealing with the symptoms of our collapse without knowing it?
 
Are we changing the world in a way that is damaging to us?
~an excerpt from The Sleep of Reason

REAL SCIENCE:
The Gut-Brain Connection to Mood Disorders, Autism: These microbes’ reach may extend much further, into the human brain. A growing group of researchers around the world are investigating how the microbiome, as this bacterial ecosystem is known, regulates how people think and feel. Scientists have found evidence that this assemblage—about a thousand different species of bacteria, trillions of cells that together weigh between one and three pounds—could play a crucial role in autism, anxiety, depression, and other disorders.

http://www.theatlantic.com/gut-bacteria-on-the-brain

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