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Decisions and Mental Health Arise From Your Gut, Not Your Head
The connection between your gut and your brain is more important than previously thought, and it may be the key to decision-making.
Who would think that your gut plays a pivotal role in your decision-making? It seems so highly improbable and yet research is pointing in that direction as it explores the intricate connections between the gut and the brain and the results are astonishing.
There is increasing evidence that the gut microbiome controls social and emotional behavior in both animals and people. However, we still do not know if and how the gut bacteria might affect how people make health decisions in a social setting. New findings in that direction show that an experimental intervention made people more willing to give up a financial reward when they thought they were being treated badly.
This change in how people made social decisions was linked to changes in the amount of tyrosine in their blood when fasting. This suggests that there may be a link between gut bacteria and behavior. These findings help us learn more about how the body and brain work together to make social decisions and why people sometimes act in ways that make little sense from an economic point of view. When considered in this manner, we begin to see how diet and medication can majorly affect our cognitive…
