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In bound-to-be-controversial new research, scientists claim they’ve discovered a link between the specific balance of microflora in the gut and psychopathic behavior
As detailed in a yet-to-be-peer-reviewed study, a team of researchers led by University of Porto biomedical scientist Carolina Costa say they’ve found the first-ever evidence of how microbiota could influence traits linked to psychopathy — a controversial personality construct characterized by lack of empathy, poor behavior control, as well as antisocial and in extreme cases criminal behavior.
As Science Alert points out, previous research has found that psychopaths can share similar brain structures, including pathways in the prefrontal cortex. The latest paper, however, suggests those links could even extend into the microbiome.
“We hypothesized that the composition of the gut and oral microbiota may be associated with subclinical psychopathic personality traits,” the researchers wrote in the paper, an “unedited version” of which was shared by the journal Translational Psychiatry. “To our knowledge, this is the first study to explore this association.”
Costa and her colleagues examined the answers of 200 adult participants who filled out a questionnaire that was specifically designed to measure psychopathic traits. They also analyzed blood, saliva, and fecal samples from the participants for bacterial composition.
While the diversity of gut and oral microbes showed no clear links to psychopathic traits in itself, those who showed stronger psychopathic traits had a higher abundance of three kinds of bacteria when compared to those with weaker psychopathic traits.
“Allisonella, Prevotella, and C. evryensis showed significant positive associations with psychopathy scores, while T. vincentii was negatively associated,” the researchers concluded. The roles of these microbacteria range from helping in digestion and other metabolic processes, to assisting in warding off infections.
The team suggests that Allisonella, in particular, has been linked to human diseases and has been found to promote inflammation, a “key factor in psychiatric disorders such as anxiety and depression,” thereby suggesting a “possible link to psychopathy.”
Prevotella has also been linked to “differences in brain regions responsible for emotional, attentional and sensory processing, leading to a deficit in specificity of encoding contextual details of incoming stimuli.”
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