Stress matters: Randomized controlled trial on the effect of probiotics on neurocognition

Abstract

Probiotics are microorganisms that provide health benefits when consumed. In animals, probiotics reverse gut microbiome-related alterations in depression-like symptoms, in cognition, and in hormonal stress response. However, in humans, a causal understanding of the gut-brain link in emotion and cognition is lacking. Additionally, whether the effects of probiotics on neurocognition are visible only in presence of stress, remains unclear. We investigated the effects of a multispecies probiotic (Ecologic®Barrier) on specific neurocognitive measures of emotion reactivity, emotion regulation, and cognitive control using fMRI. Critically, we also tested whether probiotics can buffer against the detrimental effects of acute stress on working memory. In a double blind, randomized, placebo-controlled, between-subjects intervention study, 58 healthy participants were tested once before and once after a 28-day intervention.Without stress induction, probiotics did not affect brain, behavioral, or related self-report measures. However, relative to placebo, the probiotics group did show a significant stress-related increase in working memory performance after supplementation. This change was associated with intervention-related neural changes in frontal cortex during cognitive control exclusively in the probiotics group. Overall, our results show neurocognitive effects of a multispecies probiotic in healthy women only under challenging situations, buffering against the detrimental effects of stress on cognition.

Gut Reactions: Breaking Down Xenobiotic–Microbiome Interactions

“…has met with somewhat mixed results in healthy human subjects with strain-specific positive results (Allen et al, 2016;Papalini et al, 2018) and a failure to translate (Kelly et al, 2017). Refinements of the discovery pipeline may be necessary at various pressure points, and this could include the development of psychobiotics with specific mechanisms of action, tailored toward individual patient requirements (Bambury et al, 2018).…”

Flowers or Flora?

“…Stress matters: Randomized controlled trial on the effect of probiotics on neurocognition. Papalini, S., Michels, F., Kohn, N., Wegman, J., van Hemert, S., Roelofs, K., … Aarts, E. (2019).…”

“…In Stress matters: Randomized controlled trial on the effect of probiotics on neurocognition, the team set out to investigate the effects of a multispecies probiotic on the neurocognitive measures of emotion (Papalini et al, 2019). They wanted to test whether probiotics could be used to buffer against the effects of stress on memory.…”

Multivariate associative patterns between the gut microbiota and large-scale brain network connectivity

“…We analyzed pre-intervention data from a probiotics intervention study on 64 healthy female participants (mean age = 21.5 (0.45) years) (52). In total, 58 of the 64 participants were included in the analyses.…”

“…Six participants were excluded from the final analyses, due to high depression scores (N=1), missing feces samples (N=2), and movement exceeding 4mm between acquisitions (n=3). For more detailed characteristic of the samples and exclusion criteria as well as the ethical declaration, please see the Material and Methods section of Papalini et al (52). Briefly, participants with relevant medical history of e.g.…”