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Gut microbiota

Intestinal bacteria influence brain activity in healthy humans

Nature Reviews Gastroenterology & Hepatology volume 10, pages 326–327 (2013)Cite this article

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Emerging evidence indicates that the intestinal microbiota influence brain chemistry, development and behaviour in animals. Tillisch and colleagues now show that ingestion of selected probiotics changes brain connectivity and responses to emotional challenge in healthy humans, paving the way for therapeutic exploitation of the microbiome–brain axis for functional gastrointestinal and primary behavioural disorders.

Although the therapeutic benefit of purgatives and oral antibiotics in the treatment of hepatic encephalopathy provides some evidence of intestinal microbiome-to-gut signalling, the recent ground-breaking study of Tillisch et al.1 provides the first objective evidence that gut commensal and/or probiotic bacteria influence brain activity in healthy humans. In this study, 12 healthy females ingested a beverage of fermented milk product with probiotic (FMPP) containing a mix of five bacteria—Bifidobacterium animalis subsp. lactis, Streptococcus thermophiles, two different strains of Lactobacillus delbrueckii subsp. bulgaricus and Lactococcus lactis subsp. lactis—whereas 11 healthy individuals as controls received nonfermented milk. fMRI was performed before and after a 4-week course of the treatment or control milk. All participants were challenged with an emotional attention task. This widely used test exploits the established link between emotional experience and facial expression; it utilizes a battery of pictures of human facial expressions of emotion and participants are asked to match pictures showing negative emotions such as anger and fear. Ingestion of FMPP resulted in changes in connectivity in brain regions including the midbrain, and reduced reactivity to the challenge test in brain regions that process visceral and somatic sensory information as well as in regions that influence emotional responses and that are altered in conditions such as anxiety and IBS.

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Figure 1: Intestinal bacteria influence brain activity in healthy humans.

References

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Acknowledgements

The authors are supported by grants from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research and by a grant in aid from the Nestlé Research Center.

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  1. McMaster University Faculty of Health Sciences, Farncombe Family Digestive Health Research Institute, 1200 Main Street West, Hamilton, L8N 3ZS, ON, Canada

    Stephen M. Collins & Premsyl Bercik

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  1. Stephen M. Collins
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Correspondence to Stephen M. Collins.

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The authors have received a grant for research support from the Nestlé Research Center, Nestlé, Switzerland.

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Collins, S., Bercik, P. Intestinal bacteria influence brain activity in healthy humans. Nat Rev Gastroenterol Hepatol 10, 326–327 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1038/nrgastro.2013.76

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