Gut feelings: why drugs that nurture your microbes could be the future of mental health

Scientists know our gut influences our brain. So psychobiotic drugs that shift the composition of microbes in the gut may be able to help treat disorders such as anxiety and depression In a classic comic strip, most recently gracing the Beano, tiny characters called “numskulls” live in the head of a chap called Edd, controlling what he gets up to – often with hilarious results. It has run for decades, presumably because the idea that there could be critters within us capable of exerting a profound mental and physical influence seems pretty absurd.But it appears science is having the last laugh: in recent years the idea has spawned myriad research papers – except that instead of minuscule people at work inside one’s head, it is microbes in the gut that appear to be pulling the strings. Continue reading…

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I’m taking the first brave step in improvement, going to sleep.

You might say it’s 4am how is that early? I hate sleep. I hate the feeling of waking up from a nightmare in the middle of the night. The adrenaline the rushes through me. The wild Frantic thoughts of waking up with intrusive thoughts. The darkness. The thought that going to bed means I’m sick

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Prenatal Alcohol Exposure Linked to Gender-Specific Adversities

Source: Google News – Health A new study has identified sex-specific differences in the effects of being exposed to alcohol while in the womb. Prenatal alcohol exposure increased girls’ risk of developing depression and anxiety, whereas in boys, it increased the risk of ADHD, conduct disorders, and oppositional defiance disorder. The study, based on more

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BNST PKCδ neurons are activated by specific aversive conditions to promote anxiety-like behavior

“… We found that BNSTPKCδ cell activity is associated with increased anxiety-like behavior in the elevated plus maze, increases following footshock, and unlike other BNST subpopulations, does not desensitize to repeated stress exposure. Taken together, we propose a model in which BNSTPKCδ cells may serve as threat detectors, integrating exteroceptive and interoceptive information to inform

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Negative affect and respiratory sinus arrhythmia are differentially related to social anxiety and autism features in autistic preschoolers contrasted to fragile X syndrome

“Results indicated that children with nsASD display elevated negative affect compared to both FXS and NT controls which did not differ from each other and females exhibited more negative affect relative to males. Interestingly, elevated negative affect predicted social anxiety, but not ASD in FXS. Baseline RSA did not differ across the groups; however, reduced

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Maternal perinatal depression and child neurocognitive development: A relationship still to be clarified

Pregnancy frequently is associated with emotional conditions such as anxiety and depression. Perinatal depression has an incidence of around 12%. Only recently researcher put the attention on the effects of pre- and postpartum psychopathology on infant neurocognitive development. Neurobiology studies indicate that perinatal maternal depression can significantly affect the structure and function of children’s prefrontal

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