Integration of Microbiota-Gut-Brain Axis: Significance of Autonomic Neural Influence

Abstract

The Gut-brain Axis (GBA) is the bidirectional communication between the brain and the enteric nervous system of the gut, linking emotional and cognitive centers of the brain with peripheral intestinal functions. Gut microbiota profoundly influences these interactions. The interaction between microbiota and GBA is made bidirectional by signalling from gut-microbiota to brain and from brain to gut-microbiota through neural, endocrine, immune, and humoral communications. Hence, this bidirectional relationship between gut and the brain is more precisely called as microbiota-gut-brain axis (microbiota-GBA).^[1] Microbiota-GBA is closely associated with many functions and dysfunctions in health and diseases in human beings. However, most of the data on GBA have been acquired using germ-free animal models, probiotics, antibiotics, and infection studies in experimental models. In clinical medicine, data on functions of microbiota- GBA are derived mainly from the association of dysbiosis with central nervous disorders, especially in autism and anxiety-depressive behaviours and from functional gastrointestinal disorders. Especially, irritable bowel syndrome is considered as a prototype of the disruption of this complex relationship of microbiota-GBA.^[2] Read more...