{"id":85252,"date":"2018-11-29T04:44:16","date_gmt":"2018-11-29T12:44:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2018\/11\/are-there-bacteria-in-your-brain"},"modified":"2018-11-29T04:44:16","modified_gmt":"2018-11-29T12:44:16","slug":"are-there-bacteria-in-your-brain","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2018\/11\/are-there-bacteria-in-your-brain","title":{"rendered":"Are There Bacteria in Your Brain?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"padding-right: 20px\"><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/are-there-bacteria-in-your-brain2.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Rosalinda Roberts had gotten used to seeing weird shapes in the brain. Over three decades of looking at brain tissue under an electron microscope, she\u2019d regularly come across \u201cunknown objects\u201d\u2014specks and blobs in her images that weren\u2019t supposed to be there, and didn\u2019t seem to relate to the synapses and structure that she was studying. \u201cI\u2019d just say, \u2018well I\u2019m not going to pay attention to that\u2019\u201d she explains. That\u2019s all changed now.<\/p>\n<p>Finding bacteria in the brain is usually very bad news. The brain is protected from the bacterial menagerie of the body by the blood-brain barrier, and is considered a sterile organ. When its borders are breached, things like encephalitis and meningitis can result. Which made it all the more surprising when Roberts, along with Charlene Farmer and Courtney Walker, realized that the unknown objects in their slides were bacteria.<\/p>\n<p>Many of them were caught mid-stride, entering neurons or penetrating axons. Others were in the process of dividing. They were picky, too, strongly preferring some regions of the brain over others. The surrounding brain tissue showed no signs of inflammation. If the bacteria were in the brain while the individual was alive, they were not pathogenic.<\/p>\n<p><!-- Link: <a href=\"http:\/\/nautil.us\/issue\/66\/clockwork\/are-there-bacteria-in-your-brain\">http:\/\/nautil.us\/issue\/66\/clockwork\/are-there-bacteria-in-your-brain<\/a> --><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Rosalinda Roberts had gotten used to seeing weird shapes in the brain. Over three decades of looking at brain tissue under an electron microscope, she\u2019d regularly come across \u201cunknown objects\u201d\u2014specks and blobs in her images that weren\u2019t supposed to be there, and didn\u2019t seem to relate to the synapses and structure that she was studying. [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":501,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,47],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-85252","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biotech-medical","category-neuroscience"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85252","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/501"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=85252"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85252\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=85252"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=85252"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=85252"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}