Brain microbiome —not outlandish

Recently, a study published in Science Advances provided the strongest evidence yet that a brain microbiome can and does exist in healthy vertebrates —fish, specifically. 

Researchers at the University of New Mexico discovered communities of bacteria thriving in salmon and trout brains. 

Many of the microbial species have special adaptations that allow them to survive in brain tissue, as well as techniques to cross the protective blood-brain barrier.

Matthew Olm, a physiologist who studies the human microbiome at the University of Colorado, Boulder and was not involved with the study, is inherently skeptical of the idea that populations of microbes could live in the brain, he said. 

But he found the new research convincing. “This is concrete evidence that brain microbiomes do exist in vertebrates,” he said. “And so the idea that humans have a brain microbiome is not outlandish.”