Stomach-brain communication predicts emotional symptoms and well-being, study finds

Internal physiological states, such as digestion, breathing and heartbeat, have been consistently linked to mental, psychological and emotional experiences. This body-mind connection is known to be supported by interoception, the innate ability to sense internal physiological states and sensations, such as hunger, thirst, pain, the urge to use the toilet, heartbeats, breathing and so on.

A crucial interoceptive signal is the so-called gastric rhythm, the electrical oscillation regularly produced by the stomach as a means to facilitate digestion. This rhythm has been connected to activity in the frontoparietal network, a connected set of brain regions that contributes to the regulation of emotions and attention-related processes.

Past studies suggest that the communication between the gastric rhythm and the frontoparietal network, broadly referred to as visceral-brain coupling or gastric-brain coupling, could play a role in some mental health disorders, including anxiety, depression and stress-related conditions. Yet much about the link between visceral-brain coupling and emotional or psychological symptoms has not yet been elucidated.

Researchers at Aarhus University and the German Institute of Human Nutrition have carried out a new study aimed at further exploring this relationship by looking at both the mental health symptoms of a group of people and electrical activity in their stomachs. Their paper, published in Nature Mental Health, suggests that a stronger synchronization between the stomach and the brain is often linked to poorer mental health.

“Visceral rhythms orchestrate the physiological states underlying human emotion,” wrote Leah Banellis, Ignacio Rebollo and their colleagues in their paper. “Chronic aberrations in these brain–body interactions are implicated in a broad spectrum of mental health disorders. However, the relationship between gastric–brain coupling and affective symptoms remains poorly understood. We investigated the relationship between this novel interoceptive axis and mental health in 243 participants, using a cross-validated machine learning approach.”

Banellis, Rebollo and their colleagues assessed the mental health of participants using a test that prompted them to share their emotional, mental, social and somatic experiences. They also recorded the electrical signals and activity in the participants’ stomachs, using two widely used experimental techniques known as electrogastrography (EGG) and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI).

“We find that increased frontoparietal brain coupling to the gastric rhythm indexes a dimensional signature of poorer mental health, spanning anxiety, depression, stress and well-being,” wrote Banellis, Rebollo and their colleagues.

“Control analyses confirm the specificity of these interactions to the gastric–brain axis. Our study proposes coupling between the stomach and brain as a factor in mental health and offers potential new targets for interventions remediating aberrant brain–body coupling.”

The results of this team’s investigation further emphasize the connection between gastric-brain coupling and emotional or psychological well-being, unveiling patterns that are linked to greater anxiety, low mood, stress and poor mental health. Other researchers could soon conduct additional studies exploring the processes via which strong connections between visceral signals and the brain contribute to specific mental health disorders.

In the future, these works could collectively pave the way for the development of new therapeutic strategies aimed at easing the symptoms of stress-related psychological conditions by tackling anomalous gastric-brain communication patterns.

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