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Stress-resilience impacts psychological wellbeing as evidenced by brain–gut microbiome interactions
The system of brain-gut microbiota (BGM) has a major impact on mental health. In this work, An et al. (2024) used multimodal magnetic resonance imaging and fecal samples to investigate BGM patterns linked to resilience. The authors found that individuals with high resilience exhibited a reduction in the symptoms of depression and anxiety. Additionally, they showed increased frequencies of bacterial transcriptomes (i.e., the entirety of genes present in bacterial cells) associated with energy consumption, genetic propagation, environmental adaption, and anti-inflammatory properties. These robust people also showed higher concentrations of metabolites, including dimethylglycine and N-acetylglutamate. Resilient people showed distinct brain fingerprints on neuroimaging, such as increased functional connectivity between sensorimotor networks and reward circuits during the resting state. On the other hand, the emotion regulation network’s white matter tracts and gray matter volume decreased. The authors’ findings highlight a multifaceted signature involving the BGM system, suggesting that resilience affects cognitive performance, emotion regulation, and psychiatric symptoms. These results point to critical roles for distinct neurological correlates and microbial activities maintaining gut-barrier integrity and eubiosis. Notably, bacterial transcriptomes showed the highest accuracy in classifying resilience, underscoring the microbiome’s pivotal role in shaping mental health and suggesting potential benefits of microbiome interventions for optimizing mental well-being. [NPID: Gut-brain-microbiome, resilience, mental health, bacterial transcriptomes, depression, anxiety, metabolites, microbiome interventions]
Year: 2024
