Measuring the Brain-Gut Axis in Psychological Sciences: A Necessary Challenge

[...]it has been suggested that accurate sensing of visceral information and body awareness is a critical factor for psychological and emotional regulation, well-being (Hanley et al., 2017), and the basis for an integrated experience of the self (Christoff et al., 2011). Microbiota would impact behavior via bottom-up pathways, positioning it as a factor to consider in studies attempting the understanding of well-being (O'mahony et al., 2009; Dinan and Cryan, 2012; Dinan et al., 2013). [...]increasing evidence has posited microbiota as relevant in the context of autism (Mulle et al., 2013; Sgritta et al., 2019), schizophrenia (Severance et al., 2016), multiple sclerosis (Jangi et al., 2016), bipolar disorder (Evans et al., 2017), irritable bowel disease (Jeffery et al., 2012; Kennedy et al., 2014), obesity (Gomes et al., 2018), neurodegenerative disorders (Boehme et al., 2019), and depression (Naseribafrouei et al., 2014; Jiang et al., 2015; Aizawa et al., 2016; Kelly et al., 2016; Heym et al., 2019). [...]growing evidence posits the gastrointestinal system in general -and the microbiota in particular- as a fundamental regulator of nervous system functioning (Agustí et al., 2018; Davidson et al., 2018) with clear neurobiological mechanisms (Cryan and Dinan, 2012; Ma and Ma, 2019) and potential impact on health and behavior. [...]psychobiotics with different combinations of strains have been used to assess their effects over depression symptoms in healthy participants and clinical population (Pirbaglou et al., 2016).