The Little Book of Irish Science SFI Little Book of Irish Science | Page 32

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Happy Gut Bugs
Your gut is naturally home to trillions of bacteria, and
their eff ects could be far reaching: they may even have
an impact on mood. Researchers at the Science
Foundation Ireland, APC Microbiome Institute in
University College Cork discovered that if mice lacked
gut bacteria in early life, they had altered levels in
adulthood of a chemical called serotonin in the brain.
Serotonin is thought to be involved in regulating
mood. Moreover, these mice also displayed autistic-
like behavioural traits. Separately, the researchers
also found that feeding mice with a specifi c strains of
probiotic gut bacteria (so called psychobiotics) meant
the animals displayed less anxious behaviour.