title: Consumption of fermented milk product with probiotic modulates brain activity.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  Changes in gut microbiota have been reported to alter signaling mechanisms, emotional behavior, and visceral nociceptive reflexes in rodents. However, alteration of the intestinal microbiota with antibiotics or probiotics has not been shown to produce these changes in humans. We investigated whether consumption of a fermented milk product with probiotic (FMPP) for 4 weeks by healthy women altered brain intrinsic connectivity or responses to emotional attention tasks.
  
  
  METHODS
  Healthy women with no gastrointestinal or psychiatric symptoms were randomly assigned to groups given FMPP (n = 12), a nonfermented milk product (n = 11, controls), or no intervention (n = 13) twice daily for 4 weeks. The FMPP contained Bifidobacterium animalis subsp Lactis, Streptococcus thermophiles, Lactobacillus bulgaricus, and Lactococcus lactis subsp Lactis. Participants underwent functional magnetic resonance imaging before and after the intervention to measure brain response to an emotional faces attention task and resting brain activity. Multivariate and region of interest analyses were performed.
  
  
  RESULTS
  FMPP intake was associated with reduced task-related response of a distributed functional network (49% cross-block covariance; P = .004) containing affective, viscerosensory, and somatosensory cortices. Alterations in intrinsic activity of resting brain indicated that ingestion of FMPP was associated with changes in midbrain connectivity, which could explain the observed differences in activity during the task.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Four-week intake of an FMPP by healthy women affected activity of brain regions that control central processing of emotion and sensation.
authors.affiliation: Oppenheimer Family Center for Neurobiology of Stress, Division of Digestive Diseases, Department of Medicine, David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, Los Angeles, California 90095, USA. ktillisch@mednet.ucla.edu
authors.forename: Kirsten
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Tillisch
authors.forename: Jennifer
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Labus
authors.forename: Lisa
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Kilpatrick
authors.forename: Zhiguo
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: Jiang
authors.forename: Jean
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Stains
authors.forename: Bahar
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Ebrat
authors.forename: Denis
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Guyonnet
authors.forename: Sophie
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Legrain-Raspaud
authors.forename: Beatrice
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Trotin
authors.forename: Bruce
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Naliboff
authors.forename: Emeran A
authors.initials: EA
authors.lastname: Mayer
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D001288:Attention / Q000502:physiology*; D001644:Bifidobacterium; D001921:Brain / Q000502:physiology*; D043302:Cultured Milk Products; D005260:Female; D059907:Functional Neuroimaging; D006801:Humans; D007778:Lactobacillus; D013294:Lactococcus lactis; D008279:Magnetic Resonance Imaging; D008875:Middle Aged; D019936:Probiotics; D048249:Streptococcus thermophilus; D016896:Treatment Outcome; D055815:Young Adult