TWiM #58: The Brain Mi­cro­biome?

Note. The var­i­ous links in this older post may no longer work.

Hosts: Vin­cent RacanielloMichael Schmidt, and Elio Schaechter.

Vin­cent, Elio and Michael re­view how un­der­ground mycelial net­works carry sig­nals that warn neigh­bor­ing plants of aphid at­tack, and the pres­ence of bac­te­ria in the hu­man brain. 

Or right click to down­load the au­dio file. (59 MB .mp3, 81 min­utes)

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bks
13 years ago

I wish there were tran­scripts of these. I would dearly love to lis­ten to the part about par­a­sitoids again, but it's such a has­sle to find it. If only it were here in plain text tran­scrip­tion, I could find it in less than three sec­onds, prob­a­bly in less than one sec­ond. Here's a sim­i­lar ar­ti­cle, in tomato, from 2010
http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0013324
–bks

Keith Bell
13 years ago

The file posted here is not the cor­rect show. The cor­rect show can be ac­cessed by click­ing down­load. The brain is not ster­ile, nor was it ever meant to be ster­ile. Fe­tal brain de­vel­op­ment may de­pend on omega‑3 fatty acids of fe­tal gut and brain ori­gin. Yet mod­ern sci­ence still be­lieves the fe­tal gas­troin­testi­nal tract is ster­ile with­out a lick of ev­i­dence. Al­phapro­teobac­te­ria (wol­bachia) are also known to live in the brains of in­sects. This may also solve rid­dles of how in­sulin is made in the brain via stim­u­la­tion of ep­ithe­lial cells of the blood-brain bar­rier, etc., pH bal­ance and im­bal­ance via CO2 ab­sorp­tion . . . per­haps even con­trol of other types of mi­crobes such as fungi where over­growth of fungi may cause neu­rode­gen­er­a­tion in­clud­ing Alzheimer's (this is why co­conut oil is known to halt and re­verse Alzheimer's in early stages via lau­ric acid). Wel­come to the world of bal­anced brain flora.