Dan Barth and Zach Smith in the news
CU Psychology and Neuroscience Professor Dan Barth (Behavioral Neuroscience) and postdoctoral researcher (and CU PhD) Zach Smith were in the news, getting interviewed for an article in CU Boulder Today about some recent research demonstrating that prenatal exposure to good bacteria might prevent the development of an autism-like disorder in rats. Using a rat model, they had previously shown that administration of a drug (terbutaline) commonly used to delay preterm labor in humans resulted in rat offspring exibiting signs of an autism-like disorder. In the present research they were able to block this effect by giving the rat mothers the "good" bacterium M. vaccae. Read more about this research in the CU Boulder Today article, or read the published in Brain, Behavior, and Immunity.