Bacteria Found in Soil Might Make You Smarter and Happier

Posted on May 30, 2010

Mycobacterium vaccae is a species of the Mycobacteriaceae family of bacteria that lives naturally in soil. The bacteria is related to the tuberculosis bacterium, but it does not cause tuberculosis or tuberculosis symptoms. Researchers found in a new study that mice injected with mycobacterium vaccae can solve mazes twice as quickly and are less stressed when doing so.

Researchers looked at mycobacterium vaccae, a kind of natural bacteria that's found in soil. People ingest or breathe in the germ when they spend time in nature, researcher Dorothy Matthews of The Sage Colleges in Troy, N.Y., said in a news release.
Previous research suggested that the germ, when heat-killed and injected into mice, boosted levels of serotonin and lowered anxiety levels. Since serotonin levels are associated with learning, Matthews and her colleague Susan Jenks decided to feed the live bacteria to mice and see if they did a better job of learning a maze than control mice who were not fed the germ.
The mice who ate the bacteria "navigated the maze twice as fast and with less demonstrated anxiety behaviors as control mice," Matthews said.

This is not the first time the bacteria has been linked to improving moods. There were several articles about mycobacterium vaccae and mood published in 2007 and 2008 - see here. There was also a recent study that found exercise in a green place for just a brief period of time can make people feel better, but Mycobacterium vaccae was not mentioned in the study.

HEALTH