From Nature:
Over the last decade, Sonia Villapol’s research has focused on the complex connections between the brain and the gut. Villapol, a neuroscientist at the Houston Methodist Department of Neurosurgery, specializes in brain injuries, aiming to uncover interventions that promote fuller recoveries after traumatic brain injury (TBI). In 2018, her team was the first to link brain injury to the gut microbiome1.
That study used a mouse model in which a small area of cerebral cortex is briefly compressed in anaesthetized animals. “Just hours after TBI, there are changes in the gut microbiome,” Villapol says. “That was shocking.” Subsequently, her group found that collegiate American football players diagnosed with concussion had lower levels of certain intestinal microbes2. Given brain injuries alter the gut microbiome in mice and people, Villapol wanted to know if the reverse is true: do intestinal bacteria influence how the brain responds to injury?
More here.
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