The Central Nervous System and the Gut Microbiome

The many ways our gut microbiome can affect health by suppressing autoimmune and allergic disorders has now pretty much become mainstream science. The exciting developing area is understanding how components of a normal, healthy gut microbiome affect the development of the brain, the integrity of the blood-brain barrier, and behaviour. Sarkis Mazmanian and June Round have been two important pioneers in microbiome research, particularly in mapping out the way our microbiome interacts with immunity, and in this recent paper in Cell, Mazmanian joins forces with Gil Sharon and Timothy Sampson, from his laboratory at Caltech, and leading brain  researcher Dan Geschwind from UCLA, who focuses on integrating basic neurobiology, genetics, and genomics with translational studies of human diseases. Here they review what we are finding out about the relationship between the gut microbiome and the CNS. “The development of a healthy, functional brain”, they say, “depends on key pre- and post-natal events that integrate environmental cues, such as molecular signals from the gut. These cues largely originate from the microbiome, the consortium of symbiotic bacteria that reside within all animals. Research over the past few years reveals that the gut microbiome plays a role in basic neurogenerative processes such as the formation of the blood-brain barrier, myelination, neurogenesis, and microglia maturation and also modulates many aspects of animal behavior. Herein, we discuss the biological intersection of neurodevelopment and the microbiome and explore the hypothesis that gut bacteria are integral contributors to development and function of the nervous system and to the balance between mental health and disease.” (my emphasis).