In the Blogs: When Yogurt Affects the Brain

By Olga Khazansep 

     

English is rich with idioms that connect our bellies with our behavior. We get “butterflies in our stomachs” or just have a “gut feeling” about things. But increasingly, there’s scientific evidence that the bacteria in our guts might influence emotion and behavior.

Our gastrointestinal tracts teem with tens of thousands of species of bacteria. These germs are already known to help regulate the digestive process and to play a role in weight and food cravings. Some scientists are finding, though, that these same microbes can also alter our brain chemistry. Just how this happens is still being figured out, but one pathway might be the vagus nerve, which runs from the brain to the stomach. The bacteria stimulate the vagus nerve, and that, in turn, stimulates the production of various neurotransmitters—the brain chemicals that partly determine what we think and how we feel.

Mice raised in sterile, bacteria-free bubbles exhibit autistic-like social traits. “When we look at the brains of these animals, we see marked changes in the serotonin system and the levels of proteins involved in plasticity,” said John Cryan, a neuroscience professor at Ireland’s University College Cork during a recent talk at TEDMED.

One study showed that giving such mice a certain probiotic reversed their autistic symptoms. Feeding a different probiotic to anxious rodents brought down their anxiety levels, as did administering a fecal transplant to one particularly anxious mouse.

And it’s not just mice: In 2011, a small group of human volunteers saw reductions in depression and anxiety after taking a combination of Lactobacillus helveticus and Bifidobacterium longum for 30 days. Two years later, scientists at UCLA found that healthy women who ate yogurt twice a day showed changes in the parts of the brain that process emotion.

Now, Cryan and others have put forth a speculative theory that our gut bacteria played a key role in developing early humans' social personalities. As human society evolved, people needed to understand each other better in order to cooperate, share resources, make tools, hunt, mate, and raise children. Based on the story of the autistic, bacteria-free mice, Cryan suggests that it might have been our gut bacteria that spurred us, back in our caveman days, to learn to get along with others. Look at it from the bacteria's perspective: The better their human hosts became at socializing, the more likely it would be that they would prosper and multiply. And the more humans there were, the more real estate there was for the gut bacteria.

“It's better for humans to be in social groups, but also better for bacteria,” said Cryan, who presented this theory in an article that’s in press in Frontiers in Cellular and Infection Microbiology. “Anything that increases the potential for one's genes to be passed on and to be spread is what's driving evolution. Being in a social group would allow that for the bacteria and for humans.”

All of this research is still at the very early stages. We have no idea which probiotics will treat specific psychological symptoms. Cryan said it’s important to develop more scientific rigor behind this idea before we go swapping our Celexa for Chobani.

“Probiotics are drugs,” Cryan said. “Drugs do stuff. If you have allergies and you take an antihistamine, it will do something, but if you take a statin, it won't.” The next step, he notes, is “about designing precision probiotics so we know how they are on their own and collectively.”

Given how dissatisfied people tend to be with traditional antidepressants and their side effects, though, it’s promising that there might be a future in which we can feel happier just by manipulating our microbiota. It certainly would add merit to the idea that what we eat affects everything. Or as Cryan put it, in a classically TEDMEDy way, “Your state of mind might be dependent on your state of gut.”

Olga Khazansep is a staff writer at The Atlantic, where she covers health.

More Art Walkabout Photos From the L Streets

Don Mangus, Leaves and Shadows I, iPhone photo, 2014

Don Mangus, Leaves and Shadows II, iPhone photo, 2014

Don Mangus, Leaves and Shadows III, iPhone photo, 2014

Don Mangus, Leaves and Shadows IV, iPhone photo, 2014

Don Mangus, Leaves and Shadows V, iPhone photo, 2014

Recently Read: A Universe Of Consciousness: How Matter BecomesImagination

This was a tough one. It will take a while to fully process the compressed density of the interlocking concepts presented.

A Universe Of Consciousness: How Matter Becomes Imagination 

by Gerald Edelman and Giulio Tononi 

In A Universe of Consciousness, Gerald Edelman builds on the radical ideas he introduced in his monumental trilogy-Neural Darwinism, Topobiology, and The Remembered Present-to present for the first time an empirically supported full-scale theory of consciousness. He and the neurobiolgist Giulio Tononi show how they use ingenious technology to detect the most minute brain currents and to identify the specific brain waves that correlate with particular conscious experiences. The results of this pioneering work challenge the conventional wisdom about consciousness.

Amazon.com Review

Emily Dickinson wrote "The Brain--is wider than the Sky," and who can argue with that? Quoted by Nobel-winning scientist Gerald M. Edelman and his Neurosciences Institute colleague Giulio Tononi in A Universe of Consciousness, Miss Emily neatly explains the problem of conscious awareness, then ducks out of the way as the two scientists get to work solving it. Testable theories of consciousness are mighty lonely, as even the soberest mind can be driven to tears of madness pondering its own activity. Centuries of work by philosophers and psychologists like James and Freud have made little progress by starting with awareness and working backward to the brain; these days we have a secure enough base to try looking in the other direction and building a theory of the mind out of neurons.

Though Edelman and Tononi do make a good effort to help out the lay reader, ultimately A Universe of Consciousness is aimed at the interdisciplinary gang of scientists and academics trying to understand our shared but invisible experience. The first sections of the book cover the basic philosophical, psychological, and biological elements essential to their theory. Swiftly the authors proceed to define terms and concepts (even the long-abused term complexity gets a reappraisal) and elaborate on these to create a robust, testable theory of the neural basis of consciousness. Following this hard work, they consider some ramifications of the theory and take a close look at language and thinking. This much-needed jump-start is sure to provoke a flurry of experimental and theoretical responses; A Universe of Consciousness might just help us answer some of the greatest questions of science, philosophy, and even poetry. -- Rob Lightner 

From Scientific American

A woman senses that a room is light or dark and is aware that she has done so. A photocell senses the same thing without awareness. The difference is consciousness--something everyone recognizes but no one can fully explain. Edelman (director of the Neurosciences Institute in San Diego) and Tononi (a senior fellow there) propose what they call the dynamic core hypothesis to explain the neural basis of conscious experience. "This hypothesis states that the activity of a group of neurons can contribute directly to conscious experience if it is part of a functional cluster, characterized by strong mutual interactions among a set of neuronal groups over a period of hundreds of milliseconds." They call such a cluster the dynamic core because of "its ever-changing composition yet ongoing integration." In telling their tale, the authors describe brain structure and function, review earlier efforts to explain consciousness and come to a discussion of higher-order consciousness--the kind that humans have. "Our position has been that higher-order consciousness, which includes the ability to be conscious of being conscious, is dependent on the emergence of semantic capabilities and, ultimately, of language. Concomitant with these traits is the emergence of a true self, born of social interactions, along with concepts of the past and future." -- the Editors of Scientific American

In the Blogs: There Is Scientific Proof That Happiness Is A Choice

By Carolyn Gregoire  The Huffington Post 

One theory in psychology research suggests that we all have a happiness "set-point" that largely determines our overall well-being. We oscillate around this set point, becoming happier when something positive happens or the opposite, afterwards returning to equilibrium.

But this set-point, to a certain extent, can be reset. Although our general mood levels and well-being are partially determined by factors like genetics and upbringing, roughly 40 percent of our happiness is within our control, according to some experts, and a large body of research in the field of positive psychology has shown that happiness is a choice that anyone can make. As psychologist William James put it, “The greatest discovery of any generation is that a human can alter his life by altering his attitude."

Here are eight ways you can take control of your own happiness.

Simply try.

A little effort can go a long way in increasing happiness. Two small experimental studies, published this year in the Journal of Positive Psychology, found that simply trying to be happier could actually elevate mood and well-being. In one study, two groups of students listened to "happy" music -- one group was instructed to make a concerted effort to feel happier, while the other group was instructed not to actively try to lift their mood. The group that tried to feel happy experienced the most elevated moods after listening to the music.

Make happiness your number-one goal.

People who are happy choose to make happiness among their top goals in life, according to psychologist Tom G. Stevens, Ph.D., author of You Can Choose to Be Happy.

"Choose to take advantage of opportunities to learn how to be happy," Stevens told WebMD. "For example, reprogram your beliefs and values. Learn good self-management skills, good interpersonal skills, and good career-related skills. Choose to be in environments and around people that increase your probability of happiness. The persons who become the happiest and grow the most are those who also make truth and their own personal growth primary values."

Linger on those little, positive moments.

According to Rick Hanson, neuropsychologist and author of Hardwiring Happiness, our brains are wired to scout for all that's bad -- as he puts it, the brain is like velcro for negative experiences and teflon for positive ones. This "negativity bias" causes the brain to react intensely to bad news, compared to how it responds to good news. But we can counter the brain's negativity bias -- which triggers us to form stronger bad memories than good ones -- by appreciating and lingering on those tiny, positive moments.

"People don't recognize the hidden power of everyday experiences," Hanson told The Huffington Post. "We're surrounded by opportunities -- 10 seconds here or 20 seconds there -- to just register useful experiences and learn from them. People don't do that when they could."

Choose mindfulness.

The secret to happiness could be as simple (and difficult) as becoming more mindful. Meditation -- a practice that anyone can do, anywhere, so long as they're willing to sit and try to silence the mind -- is thought to be a happiness-booster.

University of Wisconsin psychology professor Richard Davidson found in his research that a meditation practice might help to shift brain activity from the right frontal area of the brain (associated with depression, anxiety and worry) to the left, which has been found to correlate with feelings of happiness, excitement, joy and alertness.

Smile your way to happiness.

The secret to boosting your mood could be as simple as making yourself smile. A 2011 Michigan State University study found that workers who smiled as a result of cultivating positive thoughts exhibited improved mood and less withdrawal. Fake smiling, on the other hand, resulted in worse moods and withdrawal from work.

Practice gratitude.

Cultivating thankfulness and gratitude is a scientifically-backed way to increase happiness, and it's firmly within your control to choose to be more grateful.

Grateful people tend to appreciate simple pleasures, defined as "those pleasures in life that are available to most people," according to a report in the Journal of Social Behavior and Personality.

Pursue happiness, find happiness -- and success.

Conventional thinking has it that pursuing success will lead to happiness, but research has shown that it may be just the opposite. Pursuing happiness leads not only to happiness itself, but also to success, according to Shawn Achor, author of The Happiness Advantage.

In his 12 years researching happiness at Harvard, Achor found that cultivating a positive mindset could boost well-being and improve workers' performance on many levels, from productivity to creativity and engagement.

"People who cultivate a positive mind-set perform better in the face of challenge," he wrote in Harvard Business Review in 2012. "I call this the 'happiness advantage' -- every business outcome shows improvement when the brain is positive."

Let yourself be happy.

Bronnie Ware, a palliative care nurse who spent years working with elderly people on their deathbeds, noticed a common theme that came up repeatedly among her patients at the end of their lives: They regretted not "letting" themselves be happy.

Ware, the author of The Top Five Regrets Of The Dying, wrote in a Huffington Post blog:

Many did not realize until the end that happiness is a choice. They had stayed stuck in old patterns and habits. The so-called 'comfort' of familiarity overflowed into their emotions, as well as their physical lives. Fear of change had them pretending to others, and to their selves, that they were content. When deep within, they longed to laugh properly and have silliness in their life again ... Life is a choice. It is YOUR life. Choose consciously, choose wisely, choose honestly. Choose happiness.

Practice compassion.

Want to increase your brain's capacity for happiness? Try meditating on compassion. Brain-scanning studies on French monk Matthieu Ricard found that when he was practicing loving-kindness meditation, his brain produced gamma waves "never reported before in the neuroscience literature." Ricard has the largest capacity for happiness ever recorded, thanks to neuroplasticity.

“Meditation is not just blissing out under a mango tree but it completely changes your brain and therefore changes what you are,” Ricard told the New York Daily News.

In the Blogs: A Blood Test for Depression May Show the Illness Is Not A Matter Of Will

By Anna Almendrala 

Screening for depression might soon be as easy as a blood test.

A new test that identifies particular molecules in the blood could help doctors diagnose patients with clinical depression, according to a new study published in the journal Translational Psychiatry. The blood test can also predict which therapies would be most successful for patients, and lays the groundwork for one day identifying people who are especially vulnerable to depression -- even before they’ve gone through a depressive episode.

But perhaps just as important, said lead investigator Eva Redei, Ph.D., is the potential the test has for taking some of the stigma out of a depression diagnosis. When depression can be confirmed with a blood test like any other physical ailment, she said, there’s less stigma about having the disease and getting treatment.

“I really believe that having an objective diagnosis will decrease stigma,” Redei, a neuroscientist and professor at the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, told The Huffington Post. “Once you have numbers in your hand, you can identify that [depression] is an illness -- not a matter of will.”

The most effective way to treat depression is to treat it early, but past studies show that it takes an average of two to 40 months to diagnose depression -- if it gets diagnosed at all. Redei’s depression blood test could lead to faster and more accurate diagnoses, thereby transforming the way depression is treated.

If Redei’s findings are independently replicated and confirmed, then approved by the Food and Drug Administration, laboratories across the U.S. could incorporate the test into their battery of routine exams. This is in contrast to MDDScore, a depression blood test owned by Ridge Diagnostics that was announced in 2012. Because the test is proprietary to Ridge Diagnostics, doctors have to submit samples to the company’s lab in North Carolina, where the company analyzes the blood and sends back results. Redei's test, however, "can be done by any clinical laboratory anywhere, just like a cholesterol test,” Redei explained. “That is, assuming that we can go through the FDA approval [process] fast.”

Redei’s study compared the blood samples of 32 patients who had been diagnosed with depression in the traditional way (a clinical interview) with samples taken from 32 people without depression. She found nine RNA blood markers -- the molecules that carry out DNA's instructions -- that differed significantly between the two groups, which she then used as the basis for the depression diagnosis.

Then, the depressed patients went through 18 weeks of cognitive behavioral therapy, a common treatment for depression. Re-testing their blood, Redei was able to tell which patients had benefitted the most from therapy, just by examining the changes in their RNA markers. In other words, the test was also a biological way to tell if treatment had been effective.

Finally, Redei also noticed that there were three RNA markers that didn’t change in depressed patients, no matter if they had benefitted from cognitive behavioral therapy or not. She suspects they may be markers that show if a person is predisposed to depression.

"Being aware of people who are more susceptible to recurring depression allows us to monitor them more closely,” said David Mohr, Ph.D., co-lead author of the study in a press release. “They can consider a maintenance dose of antidepressants or continued psychotherapy to diminish the severity of a future episode or prolong the intervals between episodes.”

Zachary Kaminsky, Ph.D., of the Mood Disorders Center at Johns Hopkins Medicine, wasn’t involved with the study but is excited about its potential implications for depression treatment. Kaminsky is a pioneer in blood tests to predict suicide risk, and although he and Redei measure very different things in their tests, he sees that both researchers have similar goals when it comes to creating biological tests for mental illnesses.

“It’s an exciting time -- there is potential to find factors that are going to distinguish between various mental illnesses as well as responses to direct clinical treatment,” said Kaminsky to HuffPost. “Any finding that gets us closer to that is very interesting and worth following up.”

But Kaminsky also pointed out that Redei and Mohr’s research still needs to be independently validated by other patient populations to confirm that it works. For instance, Kaminsky pointed out, the study would have been more scientifically rigorous if it had used a different patient group to confirm the blood test, as opposed to using the same participants to both create and then test the predictions.

"I think this is very early stage and this model needs to be investigated in an independent sample,” Kaminsky said. “It will be important to test the predictability of these expression measures in independent cohorts.”

Redei acknowledged that the next step in research would be to run the tests on larger samples in order to validate the models and then submit them for FDA approval.

“The major question here is always funding,” said Redei. “We are really trying to gather as much funding from as many sources as possible so it can move ahead."

Major depressive disorder affects an estimated 6.7 percent of the U.S. population and is the leading cause of disability for Americans ages 15 to 44, according to the Anxiety and Depression Association of America. Despite the research hurdles she still needs to overcome, Redei is confident that her test can make a positive impact on the millions who struggle with depression -- not only by making treatment more precise, but by bringing psychiatry "into the 21st century,” Redei said. “We’ll get to the point where there won’t be any discrimination between physical illness and mental illness.”

In the Blogs: A Robert Reich Facebook Post

Rex Brandt Watercolor Seascape Paintings

Rex Brandt gained national renown for his watercolor paintings during the period from the mid 1930s to the 1990s. As a dedicated teacher of the watercolor medium, he conducted painting workshops both at his home in Corona del Mar, his summer home in the San Juan Islands off the coast of Washington, and at several international locations. Brandt published more than ten books on watercolor painting, including The Winning Ways of Watercolor. Although he painted with other media (including oil, to which he developed an allergy), he preferred watercolor, which he considered to be the most expressive and the perfect vehicle to paint “light and air.”

Sunshine was the essential theme of his long career. He wrote: “Whether we are conscious of it or not, everything in the perceived world is in motion. Sunshine is the mediator, a pervasive quality in which things are lost and found, emerge and recede…”

Rexford Elson Brandt was born in San Diego in 1914. He grew up in Riverside and attended Riverside Junior College and the University of California, Berkeley, receiving his degree in 1936. The art department at Berkeley was decidedly modernist, in part a legacy of the German abstract artist and teacher Hans Hofmann, who taught there in the summers of 1930 and 1931. Brandt’s teachers at Berkeley included John Haley and Margaret Peterson, both of whom had studied with Hofmann. Brandt also studied Byzantine and Chinese art, both of which influenced his painting style and his teaching.

After returning to Southern California, Brandt joined the California Water Color Society and became an active participant with artists of the American scene including Millard Sheets and Phil Dike. He was a champion of the so-called California school and organized one of the first group exhibitions of their work, in 1937. In the post-War era, Brandt eschewed literal representation except in his teaching and instead focused on complex, semi-abstract studio works in which he explored the effects of sunlight.