What if the intestines were able to control some of our emotions? This is what a team of researchers at the University of Los Angeles UCLA suggests …
The intestinal microbiota represents all the bacteria colonizing the digestive tract. These bacteria, in large numbers and very diverse, are involved in many mechanisms, notably in the functions of digestion and defenses of the organism.
In this study, the researchers sought to identify brain and behavioral characteristics of healthy women clustered by gut microbiota profiles: fecal samples were collected and the volunteers were divided by their gut bacteria composition into two groups.
The first group, characterized by an abundance of bacteria of the genus Bacteroides, showed greater thickness of the gray matter in the frontal cortex and larger volumes of the hippocampus. These brain regions are respectively involved in the complex processing of information and memory.
The second group was characterized by a majority of bacteria of the genus Prevotella. This group had lower brain volumes in the regions cited above and showed more connections between brain regions involved in emotions. Using MRI, researchers found that volunteers in this group had higher levels of anxiety and irritability than women in the Bacteroides group.
These results support the concept of brain-gut-microbiota interactions in healthy humans. Researchers do not yet know whether bacteria in the gut influence the development of the brain and its activity when unpleasant emotional content is encountered, or if existing differences in the brain influence the type of bacteria that reside in the gut. Both possibilities, however, could lead to important changes in how one thinks about human emotions.
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