Summary: A new study finds that resilient individuals have improved brain function and a healthier gut microbiome. Research highlights that resilient people have better emotional regulation and less inflammation.
This study is the first to explore the link between resilience, brain activity and gut health. The findings suggest potential new treatments targeting both the brain and gut to reduce stress and prevent disease.
Highlights:
- Improved brain function: Resilient people have better cognition and better emotional regulation.
- Healthy gut microbiome: Resilient individuals have a gut microbiome with lower inflammation and stronger intestinal barriers.
- Holistic health: The study highlights resilience as a whole-body phenomenon affecting both brain and gut health.
Source: UCLA
A new study from UCLA Health found that resilient people show neural activity in brain regions associated with better cognition and emotion regulation, and are more attentive and better able to describe their feelings .
The same group also showed gut microbiome activity linked to a healthy gut, with reduced inflammation and gut barrier.
For the study, rather than looking at microbiome activity and composition linked to illnesses like anxiety and depression, the researchers wanted to flip the script and study the gut microbiome and brains of healthy people. healthy and resilient people who effectively cope with different types of stress, including discrimination and social isolation.
“If we can identify what a resilient, healthy brain and microbiome look like, we can then develop targeted interventions in these areas to reduce stress,” said Arpana Gupta, PhD, lead author and co-director of the Goodman Microbiome Center. Luskin of UCLA.
This is believed to be the first study to explore the intersection of resilience, the brain and the gut microbiome.
Gupta and his team focused on methods for coping with stress because research has shown that untreated stress can increase the risk of heart disease, stroke, obesity and diabetes. Although stress is an inevitable part of life, studying how to manage stress can help prevent the development of disease.
To conduct the study, published in Nature Mental Health, researchers asked 116 people about their resilience – such as trusting their instincts and positive acceptance of change – and separated them into two groups.
One group ranked high on the resilience scale and the other group ranked low. Participants also underwent MRI imaging and gave stool samples two or three days before their exams.
The researchers found that people in the high-resilience group were less anxious and depressed, less judgmental, and had activity in brain regions associated with emotional regulation and better cognition compared to the low-resilience group.
“When a stressor occurs, we often react with this fight-or-flight response, which alters the fractures in your brain,” Gupta said.
“But the highly resilient individuals in the study were found to be better at regulating their emotions, less likely to catastrophize, and keeping a level head,” added Desiree Delgadillo, a postdoctoral researcher and one of the first authors.
The high resilience group also had different microbiological activity than the low resilience group. Namely, microbiomes in the high-resilience group excreted metabolites and exhibited genetic activity associated with low inflammation and a strong, healthy intestinal barrier.
A weak gut barrier, also known as leaky gut, is caused by inflammation and impairs the ability of the gut barrier to absorb essential nutrients needed by the body while preventing toxins from entering the gut .
The researchers were surprised to find these microbiome signatures associated with the high resilience group.
“Resilience is truly a whole-body phenomenon that affects not only your brain, but also your microbiome and the metabolites it produces,” Gupta said.
“We have this whole community of microbes in our gut that give off these therapeutic properties and these biochemicals, so I’m looking forward to building on that research,” Delgadillo said.
The team’s future research will investigate whether an intervention aimed at increasing resilience will change the activity of the brain and gut microbiome.
“We could have treatments targeting both the brain and the gut that could perhaps one day prevent disease,” Gupta said.
About this research news in neuroscience and microbiome
Author: Kelsie Sandoval
Source: UCLA
Contact: Kelsie Sandoval – UCLA
Picture: Image is credited to Neuroscience News
Original research: Closed access.
“Stress resilience impacts psychological well-being, as evidenced by interactions between the brain and the gut microbiome” by Arpana Gupta et al. Natural mental health
Abstract
Stress resilience impacts psychological well-being, as evidenced by brain-gut microbiome interactions
The brain-gut microbiome (BGM) system plays an influential role in mental health. We characterized BGM patterns related to resilience using fecal samples and multimodal magnetic resonance imaging.
Data integration analysis using latent components showed that the high resilience phenotype was associated with decreased symptoms of depression and anxiety, higher frequency of bacterial transcriptomes (related to environmental adaptation, to genetic propagation, energy metabolism and anti-inflammation), an increase in metabolites (NOT-acetylglutamate, dimethylglycine) and cortical signatures (increased resting-state functional connectivity between reward circuits and sensorimotor networks; decreased gray matter volume and white matter pathways within the emotion regulation network ).
Our findings support a multi-omics signature involving the BGM system, suggesting that resilience impacts psychological symptoms, emotion regulation, and cognitive function, as evidenced by unique neural correlates and microbiome function supporting eubiosis and the integrity of the intestinal barrier.
Bacterial transcriptomes provided the highest classification accuracy, suggesting that the microbiome plays a critical role in shaping resilience and highlighting that changes in the microbiome can optimize mental health.