Gut instinct

Alzheimer's disease (AD) is a neurodegenerative disorder marked by neuroinflammation and gradual cognitive decline. Recent research has revealed that the gut microbiota (GM) plays an important role in the pathogenesis of AD through the microbiota-gut-brain axis. However, the mechanism by which GM and microbial metabolites alter brain function is not clearly understood. GM dysbiosis increases the permeability of the intestine, alters the blood-brain barrier permeability, and elevates proinflammatory mediators causing neurodegeneration...

Aggression is an instinctive behavior that has been reported to be influenced by early-life stress. However, the potential effects of acute stress during the postweaning period, a key stage for brain development, on defensive aggression and the associated mechanism remain poorly understood. In the present study, aggressive behaviors were evaluated in adolescent mice exposed to postweaning stress. Serum corticosterone and testosterone levels, neural dendritic spine density, and gut microbiota composition were determined to identify the underlying mechanism...

Judgement and decision-making under uncertainty often rely on simplistic" rules of thumb", known as "heuristics". The purpose of this scoping review is to explore the extant literature focussed on heuristics and sport. This study employed a five-stage scoping review methodology. The databases searched were Scopus, Web of Science, SPORTDiscus, and PsycInfo. The search terms were sport*, heuristic* (and its synonyms: cognitive shortcut, shortcut, rule of thumb, mental rule, cognitive rule) plus cognitive bias...

Host-associated bacterial microbiomes can facilitate host acclimation to seasonal environmental change and are hypothesized to help hosts cope with recent anthropogenic environmental perturbations (e.g., landscape modification). However, it is unclear how recurrent and recent forms of environmental change interact to shape variation in the microbiome. The majority of wildlife microbiome research occurs within a single seasonal context. Meanwhile, the few studies of seasonal variation in the microbiome often restrict focus to a single environmental context...

The relationship between gastrointestinal tract infection, the host immune response and clinical outcome of disease is not well understood in COVID-19. We sought to understand the effect of intestinal immune responses to SARS-CoV-2 on patient outcomes including magnitude of systemic antibody induction. Combining two prospective cohort studies, ISARIC4C and INSTINCT, we acquired samples from 88 COVID-19 cases representing the full spectrum of disease severity and analysed viral RNA and host gut cytokine responses in the context of clinical and virological outcome measures...

BACKGROUND: GPs consider their gut feelings a valuable tool in clinical reasoning. Research suggests patients' gut feelings may be a useful contribution to that process. Describing these feelings more precisely could improve primary care professionals' (PCPs) recognition of patients' gut feelings and insight into the underlying reasons. These descriptions would also enable a thorough examination of the validity of patients' gut feelings and their contribution to professionals' clinical reasoning...

Adolescent chronic pain is a growing public health epidemic. Our understanding of its etiology is limited; however, several factors can increase susceptibility, often developing in response to an acute pain trigger such as a surgical procedure or mild traumatic brain injury (mTBI), or an adverse childhood experience (ACE). Additionally, the prevalence and manifestation of chronic pain is sexually dimorphic, with double the rates in females than males. Despite this, the majority of pre-clinical pain research focuses on males, leaving a gap in mechanistic understanding for females...

Shortcuts to goals are rewarded by faster attainment and punished by more frequent failure, so selection of the various kinds - heuristics, cached sequences (habits or macros ), gut instincts - depends on reward history just like other kinds of choice. The speeds of shortcuts lie on continua along with speeds of deliberation, and these continua have no obvious separation points.

Geophagy has been documented in different animal taxa including Aves and particularly in Passeriformes. However, no geophagic activity has been reported in the genus Turdoides of the family Leiothrichidae belonging to the passerine order. Studies reveal the behaviour of geophagy to be aiding in nutrient supplementation, toxin neutralisation, cytoprotection, gut pH stabilisation and parasite liberation. Here, we provide a record of geophagy in Jungle Babbler Turdoides striata in a peri-urban area of Berhampur city in India...

Humans and animals are evolved to have instinctive physiological responses to threats. The perception of threat by the brain triggers a multitude of changes across the brain and body. A large body of research have demonstrated that our hardwired survival instinct, the stress response, can become maladaptive and promote major depressive disorders and other neuropsychiatric impairments. However, gaps in our understanding of how chronic stress contributes to depression and mental disorders suggest that we also need to consider factors beyond the biology of the host...

BACKGROUND: Parents of infants and young children may have specific health information needs and preferences, as they are responsible for their children's health. COVID-19 posed many challenges for families, not least in terms of the constantly updated disease-prevention guidelines. However, little is known about parents' experiences with this unprecedented situation, that is, how and where they seek, use and evaluate COVID-19 (child)-specific health information. We aimed to find out more about this to provide insights to health (information) providers when communicating pandemic information to parents...

Children with chronic conditions are experiencing improved survival worldwide, and it is well-known that their parents are stressed. Yet, despite this knowledge, parents continue to experience stress. Our study explored the lived experience of parental stress when caring for children with various chronic conditions to identify opportunities to potentially reduce stress for these parents. This was an exploratory qualitative study using semi-structured interviews. To ensure appropriate research priorities were addressed, the study was co-designed with consumer and stakeholder involvement...

In the past two decades, work on the microbiota-gut-brain axis has led to a renewed appreciation for the interconnectedness between body systems in both clinical and scientific circles. In the USA alone, millions of adults are burdened with non-communicable chronic diseases whose putative etiologies were previously thought to be restricted to either the gut or brain, such as inflammatory bowel disease, irritable bowel syndrome, Parkinson's and Alzheimer's disease, and autism spectrum disorder. However, the recent explosion of research into the impacts of the gut microbiome on diverse aspects of human health has revealed the potentially critical importance of reciprocal interactions between the gut microbiota, the immune system, and the brain in diverse diseases and disorders...

In healthcare, uncertainty, far from being an exceptional event, is always present. The concept has been defined as the inability to decide, caused by a subjective perception of ignorance, a meta-ignorance. Ignorance may be seen as unacceptable in the context of healthcare, which seems to require certainties, hard evidence that allow exact predictions, and consequent professional decisions. For this reason, the professional who has to make decisions can be led to assume attitudes of aversion or denial of uncertainty, and to seek refuge in false certainties...

Despite significant advances in the treatment of Chronic Myeloid and Acute Lymphoblastic Leukaemia (CML and ALL, respectively), disease progression and relapse remain a major problem. Growing evidence indicates the loss of immune surveillance of residual leukaemic cells as one of the main contributors to disease recurrence and relapse. More recently, there was an appreciation for how the host's gut microbiota predisposes to relapse given its potent immunomodulatory capacity. This is especially compelling in haematological malignancies where changes in the gut microbiota have been identified after treatment, persisting in some patients for years after the completion of treatment...

The factors and mechanisms that shape the composition and function of closely related members in a complex microbial community are largely unknown. The study by Park and colleagues reveals that the fitness of various Bacteroidales species and strains in the gut microbiome is regulated by butyrate in a glycan-dependent manner.

No abstract text is available yet for this article.

OBJECTIVE: Clinical Cancer Decision Tools (CCDTs) aim to alert general practitioners (GPs) to signs and symptoms of cancer, supporting prompt investigation and onward referral. CCDTs are available in primary care in the UK but are not widely utilised. Qualitative research has highlighted the complexities and mechanisms surrounding their implementation and use; this has focused on specific cancer types, formats, systems or settings. This study aims to synthesise qualitative data of GPs' attitudes to and experience with a range of CCDTs to gain better understanding of the factors shaping their implementation and use...

No abstract text is available yet for this article.

The gut microbiome regulates a relationship with the brain known as the gut-microbiota-brain (GMB) axis. This interaction is influenced by immune cells, microbial metabolites and neurotransmitters. Recent findings show gut dysbiosis is prevalent in autism spectrum disorder (ASD) as well as attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). There are previously established negative correlations among vitamin D, vitamin D receptor (VDR) levels and severity of ASD as well as ADHD. Both vitamin D and VDR are known to regulate homeostasis in the brain and the intestinal microbiome...