The supremacy of the brain

A post principally about our friends the neurons and the fact that they communicate both inside and outside our brain. But how….and why?

We are told that our brain is uniquely responsible for so many extraordinary things. Not only does it remember, it processes, rationalises and comprises our ‘thinking’ consciousness. Unlike the loss of a leg or arm, without our brain we are lost. But is there more going on in relation to cognition than we currently realise? Whilst our brain is critically important as a processor of sensory information, from whence does it really get its commands? ‘How does the human brain, a bio-physical object, create thoughts and emotions, consciousness, subjectivity, experience? How can the material create the immaterial?’ – Arthur S Reber

New research from NERF published in the journal Science suggests that ‘the spinal cord modulates and finetunes our actions and movements by integrating different sources of sensory information, and it can do so without input from the brain. Indeed neuronal activity in the spinal cord resembles various classical types of learning and memory.’

In my posts of May 2022 Gut Reaction and December 2023 Bossed by Bacteria I examined how our gut microbiota, one of life’s great survivors, communicates two ways with the human brain (gut-brain axis) via the vagus nerve. And we comprise a lot of bacteria. The authors of Vagus Nerve and Underlying Impact on the Gut Microbiota-Brain Axis in Behavior and Neurodegenerative Diseases observe that we are home to 4 trillion microbes with more than 1000 species. 99% of our genetic composition is located in our intestinal microbiota.

They went on to describe the vagus nerve as having ‘ an important role in the signal transmission between microorganisms and the brain’, and stated ‘the projection of the vagus nerve to other parts of the brain …produces various behavioural and psychological effects’.

In correspondence this week with the intellectually generous mycologist at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio Professor Nicholas Money, I asked the question, ‘given mycelial expressions of consciousness, including sensitivity, decision making, learning, and memory; and the discovery of positive interactions between mycorrhizal fungi and bacteria -might we be underestimating the role and function of our resident bacteria? 

• Might gut bacteria,  in communicating with the human brain, be in part responsible for an aspect of human consciousness?
• Might we be mistaken in viewing ourselves as the host, and bacteria as the guest? Have we (and other life-forms) evolved as agents for and by bacteria and/or mycelium?
• Are we simply part of their evolutionary cycle?

Nik Money replied, ‘The concept of microbial consciousness is very provocative as long as one does not take it too far into the land of make believe and, for example, tremendously wishful thinking about cooperative behaviour in nature (not that you are doing this). I hope that my article, at least the one that I published in “Fungal Biology” emphasized the importance of language and the idea that consciousness can be viewed as something that exists throughout life, from the simplest cells to something as magnificent* as Homo sapiens. (*Not so much: see “The Selfish Ape.”) This cautiousness about consciousness existing along a continuum of sensitivity applies to the question of mind control by the trillions of bacteria (& billions of fungi) in our guts. It seems plausible that they alert us to the fact that they are hungry, to which we respond by feeling hungry and eating breakfast. We are then, in a sense, farmed animals.

Out there (and you may be one of them) are those existentialists who do not subscribe to a binary world but see all life, and indeed energy, as a single continuum and presence – of which the human consciousness is just an integral part. Whilst they recognise their ‘being’, they regard themselves as an element of a universally connected whole. Moreover, they often present as very happy people. Are they deluded? And might, at the root of all life, it be a fungus or bacteria that binds us all together and makes us what we are?

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Bossed by bacteria

With thanks to Axel Kock for the image

A post arising from recent research suggesting that our bacteria may manage our brains.

Do I recall this correctly? At one stage it was contended that there was a gut-brain barrier – by which the brain was isolated from the gut, and protected from its dynamic participant, the gut microbiome.

Well now you can forget that ‘scientific truth’. A new study (22.12.2023) that you can read about here suggests that the gut biome not only connects with the brain, but can influence it – both indirectly by stimulating the enteric nervous and immune systems, and directly through molecules that enter circulation and cross the blood-brain barrier. ‘Emerging evidence suggests that the timing and duration of (brain) development occurs in discrete windows called sensitive periods (SPs) which may be driven in part by cues from the developing gut microbiome.’

The study goes on to conclude, ‘Through a combination of classical statistical analysis and machine learning (ML), we find that the development of the gut microbiome, children’s cognitive abilities, and brain structure are intimately linked, with both microbial taxa and gene functions able to predict cognitive performance and brain structure.’

This recent study inevitably moves the argument against us and our fixed genetic markers as managers of our development, in favour of our controlling resident micro-organisms. Irrespective of human intention, it is our gut bacteria that forms us into what our bacteria want us to be, and make us what we are. They appear to help manage our development, including that of our brain, which is probably (if we subscribe to evolutionary theory) for their own purposes rather than ours.

Back in May 2022 I raised the importance of the gut biome in relation to our identity. I asked whether homo sapiens was the zenith of evolution, or might we simply be one of the vehicles elaborated by our clever gut microbiome to perpetuate their species? In other words, are we actually in charge, or is it out gut flora, passed from generation to generation that calls the shots?

Microbiota has been one of life’s great survivors. Flexible, adaptable, opportunistic, and seemingly ‘intelligent’, it has probably paved its own pathway through the life-forms that surround it. As intelligent life, we carry it further, and indeed everywhere we go. Perhaps we have evolved for its purpose?

Next time you consider your freedoms, opportunities, rights and entitlements, may be it would be wise to think about what is really driving your choices?

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Gut reaction

A post about the brain and the gut – the important two way communication and its implications

‘I feel it in my gut’ was one of those ‘unscientific’ comments uttered by folklorist naturists who, when not hugging trees, were discussing their intestines. And I have to admit, I was one of the sceptics until I decided to inform myself about the topic.

In their research paper, ‘The gut-brain axis: interactions between enteric microbiota, central and enteric nervous systems’, Marilia Carabotti, Annunziata Scirocco, Maria Antonietta Maselli, and Carola Severi wrote, ‘The gut-brain axis (GBA) consists of bidirectional communication between the central and the enteric nervous system (ENS), linking emotional and cognitive centers of the brain with peripheral intestinal functions. Recent advances in research have described the importance of gut microbiota in influencing these interactions. This interaction between microbiota and GBA appears to be bidirectional, namely through signaling from gut-microbiota to brain and from brain to gut-microbiota by means of neural, endocrine, immune, and humoral links. ‘

‘Insights into the gut-brain crosstalk have revealed a complex communication system that not only ensures the proper maintenance of gastrointestinal homeostasis, but is likely to have multiple effects on affect, motivation, and higher cognitive functions.’ 

It seems that our fixation with ‘the mind’ in our head may be misplaced. In focusing on brain activity and consciousness we neglect millions of microbiota living within us that generate and send messages from the ENS to the brain through our arterial and nerve pathways in the form of hormones and other instructional chemical compounds.

The fact is that our microbiome functions precisely like that of mycelium, the vegetative part of fungi. Put simply, it (they) transmit information, not on a random basis, but targeted both as to destination and purpose. Suzanne Simard in her delightfully informative book ‘Finding the Mother Tree – Uncovering the wisdom and intelligence of the forest’, describes the process perfectly with peer-reviewed science, showing how mycorrhizal fungi facilitate the exchange of nutrients, compounds and information between each other and other species through complex networks that resemble the human brain.

Our limited sensory perceptions processed by a ‘cerebral’ head-brain that has evolved for specific purposes, gives us little insight into evolution’s purposes. Are we humans actually the zenith of an evolutionary process that seeks ‘to perfect’ life, or might we simply be the fruiting bodies of the microbiota that appear to control our development through 100 million nerve cells, using our ambulant and reproductive capacity to redistribute their lifeforms?

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