Summary: A new study in Biological Psychiatry reports a toddler’s cognitive development may be predicted by the types of microbes colonizing the gut when they are a year old. Researchers found infants with high levels of Bacteriodes had better scores in cognitive tests at age 2 than those with lower levels of the bacterial genus.
Source: UNC Chapel Hill.
Can the kinds of microbes colonizing the gut at age 1 predict later cognitive development? Findings from the UNC School of Medicine shed light on the surprising role of bacteria in how our brains develop during the first years of life.
If you’re the parent of an infant, diaper duty probably isn’t your favorite part of the day. But you dutifully check the contents of each one because your pediatrician told you that color and consistency of what they leave behind can tell you a lot about their health. But what does a dirty diaper have to do with your baby’s brain?
According to first-of-their-kind findings from the UNC School of Medicine, the answer may be a lot.
Using fecal samples taken from dozens of one-year-olds and cognitive assessments of the same children a year later, researchers in the lab of Rebecca Knickmeyer, PhD, associate professor of psychiatry, found an association between certain kinds of microbial communities and higher levels of cognitive development later on. The results were published in Biological Psychiatry.
“The big story here is that we’ve got one group of kids with a particular community of bacteria that’s performing better on these cognitive tests,” said Knickmeyer. “This is the first time an association between microbial communities and cognitive development has been demonstrated in humans.”
The gut is home to trillions of microbes that can have an enormous impact on the health of individuals, affecting everything from our ability to metabolize the nutrients in our food to our risk for developing gastrointestinal disorders like colitis. This community of microbes, also known as the microbiome, can be characterized in several ways, but one of the most common is to estimate the relative abundance of different kinds of bacteria using the combined genetic material of all microorganisms in a particular environment, in this case the gut.
Knickmeyer and her colleagues sought to determine whether there might be a relationship between the gut microbiome and brain development
To establish this relationship, they collected fecal samples from 89 typically developing one-year-olds. These samples were then analyzed and clustered into three different groups, based on similarities in their microbial communities.
At age 2, the cognitive performance of these children was assessed using the Mullen Scales of Early Learning, a series of tests that examine fine and gross motor skills, perceptual abilities, and language development.
Infants in the cluster with relatively high levels of the bacterial genus Bacteroides had better cognitive scores compared to the other two clusters. In addition, babies with highly diverse gut microbiomes didn’t perform as well as those with less diverse microbiomes.
“The latter result was quite surprising,” said Knickmeyer. “We had originally predicted that children with highly diverse microbiomes would perform better – since other studies have shown that low diversity in infancy is associated with negative health outcomes, including type 1 diabetes and asthma. Our work suggests that an ‘optimal’ microbiome for cognitive and psychiatric outcomes may be different than an ‘optimal’ microbiome for other outcomes.”
Identifying optimal communities and learning how to shape them is a question for future research. For the moment, Knickmeyer and her colleagues are still trying to understand the mechanism linking gut bacteria communities to brain development.
“Are the bacteria actually ‘communicating’ with the developing brain?” asks Knickmeyer. “That’s something that we are working on now, so we’re looking at some signaling pathways that might be involved. Another possibility is that the bacterial community is acting as a proxy for some other process that influences brain development – for example, variation in certain dietary nutrients.”
Though the findings are preliminary, they suggest that early intervention may hold the key to optimizing cognitive development.
“This is the first study to show that cognitive development is associated with the microbiome, and so it’s the very first step,” said Alexander Carlson, an MD/PhD student in Knickmeyer’s lab and first author of the paper. “We’re not really at the point where we can say, ‘Let’s give everyone a certain probiotic.’ But we did have a few big takeaways from what we found. One was that when measuring the microbiome at age one, we already see the emergence of adult-like gut microbiome communities — which means that the ideal time for intervention would be before age 1.”
Several avenues of further investigation have been opened by these initial results, including relating the infant gut microbiome to other aspects of child development – including the emergence of social skills and anxiety.
“Big picture: these results suggest you may be able to guide the development of the microbiome to optimize cognitive development or reduce the risk for disorders like autism which can include problems with cognition and language,” said Knickmeyer. “How you guide that development is an open question because we have to understand what the individual’s microbiome is and how to shift it. And this is something the scientific community is just beginning to work on.”
Other UNC contributors to the findings include Kai Xia, PhD, Andrea Azcarate-Peril, PhD, Barbara Goldman, PhD, Martin Styner, PhD, Amanda L. Thompson, PhD, and John H. Gilmore, MD.
Funding: The study was funded by the National Institutes of Health and the Foundation of Hope for Research and Treatment of Mental Illness.
Source: Matt Englund – UNC Chapel Hill
Image Source: NeuroscienceNews.com image is in the public domain.
Original Research: Abstract for “Infant Gut Microbiome Associated with Cognitive Development” by Alexander L. Carlson, Kai Xia, M. Andrea Azcarate-Peril, Barbara D. Goldman, Mihye Ahn, Martin A. Styner, Amanda L. Thompson, Xiujuan Geng, John H. Gilmore, Rebecca C. Knickmeyer in Biological Psychiatry. Published online June 26 2017 doi:10.1016/j.biopsych.2017.06.021
[cbtabs][cbtab title=”MLA”]UNC Chapel Hill “Bacterial Clues in Baby’s Dirty Diapers Helps Predict Cognitive Development.” NeuroscienceNews. NeuroscienceNews, 17 July 2017.
<https://neurosciencenews.com/bacteria-baby-cognitive-development-7103/>.[/cbtab][cbtab title=”APA”]UNC Chapel Hill (2017, July 17). Bacterial Clues in Baby’s Dirty Diapers Helps Predict Cognitive Development. NeuroscienceNew. Retrieved July 17, 2017 from https://neurosciencenews.com/bacteria-baby-cognitive-development-7103/[/cbtab][cbtab title=”Chicago”]UNC Chapel Hill “Bacterial Clues in Baby’s Dirty Diapers Helps Predict Cognitive Development.” https://neurosciencenews.com/bacteria-baby-cognitive-development-7103/ (accessed July 17, 2017).[/cbtab][/cbtabs]
Abstract
Infant Gut Microbiome Associated with Cognitive Development
Background
Studies in rodents provide compelling evidence that microorganisms inhabiting the gut influence neurodevelopment. In particular, experimental manipulations that alter intestinal microbiota impact exploratory and communicative behaviors and cognitive performance. In humans, the first years of life are a dynamic time in gut colonization and brain development, but little is known about the relationship between these two processes.
Methods
We tested whether microbial composition at 1 year of age is associated with cognitive outcomes using the Mullen Scales of Early Learning and with global and regional brain volumes using structural MRI at 1 and 2 years of age. Fecal samples were collected from 89 typically developing one-year-old infants. 16S rRNA amplicon sequencing was used for identification and relative quantification of bacterial taxa.
Results
Cluster analysis identified 3 groups of infants defined by their bacterial composition. Mullen scores at age 2 differed significantly between clusters. In addition, higher alpha diversity was associated with lower scores on the overall composite score, visual reception scale, and expressive language scale at age 2. Exploratory analyses of neuroimaging data suggest the gut microbiome has minimal effects on regional brain volumes 1 and 2 years of age.
Conclusions
This is the first study to demonstrate associations between the gut microbiota and cognition in human infants. As such, it represents an essential first step in translating animal data into the clinic.
“Infant Gut Microbiome Associated with Cognitive Development” by Alexander L. Carlson, Kai Xia, M. Andrea Azcarate-Peril, Barbara D. Goldman, Mihye Ahn, Martin A. Styner, Amanda L. Thompson, Xiujuan Geng, John H. Gilmore, Rebecca C. Knickmeyer in Biological Psychiatry. Published online June 26 2017 doi:10.1016/j.biopsych.2017.06.021
