Your gut microbes might encourage criminal behavior

The parasite is best known for changing rodent behavior in ways that facilitate their prey – infection Mice seems to be permanently losing the fear of cats. Research on humans is nowhere to be final but Some studies have linked infections with parasite with personality changes, increased aggression and impulsiveness.

“This is an example of a microbiology that we know affects the brain and can potentially affect the legal view of someone judged for the crime,” “ says Allen-Vercoe. “They could say” my microbes made me do it, “and I could trust them.”

There is more evidence that connects intestinal microbes to mice behavior, which are some of the most commonly studied creatures. One study included faeces transplantation – a procedure that includes inserting fecal substances from one animal into the gut of the other. Because feces contain so many bowel bacteria, faeces transplants can somehow replace the gut microbioma. (People do this – and it seems to be an extremely effective way of treating persistent C. hard infections in people.)

Back in 2013, scientists at the University of McMaster in Canada performed a transplantation of faeces between two mice soybeans, one known for timid and another, which is usually quite greedy. This replacement of gut microbes also seemed to replace his behavior– Shigni mice became more greedy and vice versa.

Since then, microbiologists have held this study as one of the clearest demonstrations on how the change of gut microbes can change behavior – at least in mice. “But the question is: how much are you controlling you and how much is the human part of you able to overcome that control?” says Allen-Vercoe. “And that is a really difficult question to answer.”

After all, our gut microbiomes, though relatively stable, Can change. Your dietExercise, the environment, and even the people you live with, can shape the germs of germs living and in you. And the ways in which these communities change and affect behavior can be a little different for everyone. Determining precise relationships between certain microbes and criminal behavior will be extremely difficult, if not impossible.

“I don’t think you will be able to take someone’s microbioma and say,” Oh, watch-I play a bug x, which means you’re a serial killer, “says Allen-Vercoe.

Either way, Prescott hopes that progress in microbiology and metabology could help us better understand the links between germs, chemicals that produce and criminal behavior – and potentially even treat these behaviors.

“We could reach a place where microbial interventions are part of therapeutic programming,” she says.

This article first appeared in review, MIT Technology Review Weekly biotechnical newsletter. To receive it in an approach every Thursday and first read articles like this, Log in here.