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. 2022 Apr 20;12:164. doi: 10.1038/s41398-022-01922-0

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© The Author(s) 2022

Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.

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Fig. 1 — The brain connectome, gut connectome and microbiome make up the 3 hubs in the larger BGM network. All hubs are linked by bidirectional connections with multiple feedback loops generating a non-linear system. Different components of food influence the brain, the gut and the gut microbiome via different communication channels. Dietary components can influence the gut directly and reach the brain after absorption in the small intestine. In addition, diet can influence gut microbial composition and diversity, and after microbial metabolism can modulate the gut connectome. Some of the microbial derived molecules are absorbed and reach the brain via the systemic circulation and/or the vagus nerve (see Fig. 2) Similarly, the brain can modulate the microbiome directly through the effect of neuroactive substances released into the gut lumen affecting gene expression and behavior of microbes, or indirectly via alterations of the gut microbial environment. Modified with permission from Martin et al., 2018.