Microbes on the Mind: Multi-modal Neuroimaging Reveals Gut-Brain Axes in Infants

Researchers have uncovered a connection between the development of the gut microbiome in infants and the maturation of their brains. The study focused on 223 typically developing infants aged between 0 and 3 years, employing multi-modal MRI scans alongside fecal shotgun metagenomics.

By conducting a microbiome-wide association analysis, the researchers found that certain microbial features were linked to aspects of cortical morphology, white-matter microstructure, and functional networks within the infants' brains. Furthermore, regularized canonical correlation analysis revealed patterns of structural-metabolic and functional-taxonomic covariance.

To validate these findings, sparse partial least-squares analysis was applied, which not only replicated the full-sample CCA patterns but also demonstrated their defining structural and functional phenotypes. This cross-method corroboration provided strong evidence to support the initial results.

Interestingly, the longitudinal analysis of canonical scores showed that there was no significant covariation between the two. However, earlier neuroimaging CCA1 scores were observed to predict microbiome CCA1 scores one to six months later, forming a bidirectional autoregressive cross-lag model. These observational findings reveal coordinated developmental patterns and temporal ordering, shedding light on the relationship between the gut microbiome and early brain development, without establishing causality.