Fingerprints of Psychiatric Symptoms in the Stomach-Brain Axis
Poster No:
590
Submission Type:
Abstract Submission
Authors:
Leah Banellis1, Ignacio Rebollo2, Micah Allen3
Institutions:
1Aarhus University, Aarhus C, Midtjylland, 2German Institute of Human Nutrition, Potsdam-Rebrücke, Nuthetal, 3Aarhus University, Lystrup, Denmark
First Author:
Co-Author(s):
Introduction:
Pioneering research on brain-body interactions has revealed the existence of functional coupling between the rhythmic activities of the stomach and brain (Rebollo et al., 2018; Rebollo & Tallon-Baudry, 2021). While major breakthroughs support a pivotal role of the gut and enteric nervous system in psychopathology (Clapp et al., 2017; Margolis et al., 2021), the mental health implications of this recently discovered stomach-brain axis are unknown. We hypothesised that stomach-brain coupling in trans-diagnostic cortical networks would index individual differences in mental health, and in particular with anxiogenic factors.
Methods:
We estimated stomach-brain phase-coupling (Rebollo et al., 2018; Rebollo & Tallon-Baudry, 2021) by combining resting-state functional brain imaging (3 Tesla, TR=1.4, 600 volumes) with electrogastrography (Koch & Stern, 2003) in the largest brain-body study to date, with 199 individuals. To assess a spectrum of psychiatric dimensions, we sampled participants exhibiting a distribution of symptoms from subclinical to clinically significant. Specifically, the psychiatric assessment battery incorporated 37 scores across 16 validated scales including broad symptoms such as anxiety, depression, fatigue, autism, and ADHD. We then utilised multivariate prediction techniques known as Canonical Correlation Analysis (Mihalik et al., 2022) to estimate stomach-brain fingerprints indexing these mental health profiles.
·Canonical Correlation Analysis of stomach-brain coupling and psychiatric symptoms.
Results:
We observed a robust, cross-validated stomach-brain fingerprint indexing psychiatric symptoms in attentional and control networks. Specifically, healthier mental states-characterised by a continuum of transdiagnostic symptoms, including lower levels of anxiety, depression, stress, and fatigue, as well as higher well-being and quality of life-are associated with weaker stomach-brain connections in key frontal and parietal regions. Crucially, this link is exclusive to the stomach-brain axis, controlling for brain connectivity, neural variability, bodily mass, and gastric function.
Conclusions:
We discovered a unique stomach-brain biomarker of mental health, highlighting a previously unknown interoceptive component of psychiatric illness. By elucidating the complex interactions between the stomach and the brain in psychiatric illness, our findings lay the groundwork for novel diagnostic and therapeutic strategies targeting disordered brain-stomach interactions. This includes not only innovations like non-invasive vagus nerve stimulation, which recent studies such as Müller et al (2022) have found to modulate stomach-brain coupling, but also the exploration of innovative new mechanical and pharmacological interventions to remedy aberrant stomach-brain interactions (Mayeli et al., 2023; Nord et al., 2021). This breakthrough contributes significantly to multidisciplinary research on the gastrointestinal-brain axis and opens new avenues for therapeutic, diagnostic, and classification strategies in mental health.
Disorders of the Nervous System:
Psychiatric (eg. Depression, Anxiety, Schizophrenia) 1
Modeling and Analysis Methods:
Multivariate Approaches 2
Physiology, Metabolism and Neurotransmission :
Physiology, Metabolism and Neurotransmission Other
Keywords:
ELECTROPHYSIOLOGY
FUNCTIONAL MRI
Machine Learning
Multivariate
Psychiatric
Psychiatric Disorders
1|2Indicates the priority used for review
Provide references using author date format
Koch, K. L. (2003). Handbook of Electrogastrography. Oxford University Press.
Margolis, K. G. (2021). The Microbiota-Gut-Brain Axis: From Motility to Mood. Gastroenterology, 160(5), 1486–1501.
Mayeli, A. (2023). Parieto-occipital ERP indicators of gut mechanosensation in humans. Nature Communications, 14(1), Article 1.
Mihalik, A. (2022). Canonical Correlation Analysis and Partial Least Squares for Identifying Brain–Behavior Associations: A Tutorial and a Comparative Study. Biological Psychiatry: Cognitive Neuroscience and Neuroimaging, 7(11), 1055–1067.
Müller, S. J. (2022). Vagus nerve stimulation increases stomach-brain coupling via a vagal afferent pathway. Brain Stimulation, 15(5), 1279–1289.
Nord, C. L. (2021). A Causal Role for Gastric Rhythm in Human Disgust Avoidance. Current Biology, 31(3), 629-634.e3.
Rebollo, I. (2018). Stomach-brain synchrony reveals a novel, delayed-connectivity resting-state network in humans. eLife, 7, e33321.
Rebollo, I. (2021). The sensory and motor components of the cortical hierarchy are coupled to the rhythm of the stomach during rest. Journal of Neuroscience, 42(11), 2202–2220.