Could Better Mental Health Start With the Gut? Scientists Found Specific Pathways to Test
A study of 61 healthy women found region-specific associations between microbial pathways, brain chemistry, anxiety, depression, and sleep quality.
Scientists from the University of Surrey and the University of Roehampton found new evidence for the gut brain connection that could help us better understand mental health.
Published in Molecular Psychiatry on Aug. 25, the study found that specific functions performed by gut bacteria were associated with levels of two critical brain chemicals: GABA and glutamate. These neurotransmitters create the excitatory/inhibitory balance, which helps regulate everything from learning and memory to mood and anxiety.
The findings don’t determine that gut bacteria directly control brain chemistry, but offer a clearer roadmap for understanding the “gut-brain axis,” a communication network that researchers increasingly believe plays a role in mental health and neurological function.
“What is exciting here is that we can look at the gut microbiome and brain chemistry in the same living people and see that the neuroactive potential of the microbiome is related to the chemical balance of specific regions of the brain,” researcher Kathrin Cohen Kadosh said in a University of Surrey press release.
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How the Study Worked
Researchers examined 61 healthy women between the ages of 17 and 25 who underwent advanced brain scans that measured concentrations of GABA and glutamate in three brain regions. They then also analyzed stool samples to determine “genetic capacity of participants’ gut microbes to carry out metabolic processes involving GABA, glutamate, short-chain fatty acids and other neuroactive compounds,” according to the release.
Rather than looking for individual bacterial species, the team focused on what the microbes were capable of doing, including producing and breaking down compounds involved in brain signaling. One of the study’s more surprising discoveries was that the microbiome’s associations weren’t distributed evenly throughout the brain.
What the Study Found
“The fact that different brain regions showed different relationships is particularly interesting. It suggests that the gut–brain axis is not one simple pathway acting uniformly across the brain,” Kadosh said. “We are seeing a much more regionally specific picture, which gives us biological pathways that we can now investigate much more closely.”
Source: www.inc.com
