For the first time, researchers have found a scientific link between ‘gut feelings’ and mental health.
For the first time, scientists have discovered a biological basis for ‘gut feelings’, revealing that communication between the stomach’s natural rhythm and the brain plays a key role in a wide range of mental health symptoms.
The new discoveries, recently published in Nature Mental Health, emerged from the Visceral Mind Project, a unique brain-body data repository developed by prof. Micah Allen and his research group at Aarhus University, with support from the Lundbeck Foundation.
The researchers’ findings indicate that this crosstalk between the stomach and the brain is robust enough to meaningfully reflect mental health status. In other words, “the stomach-brain connection may indeed serve as a barometer for mental health," says prof. Micah Allen.
Unique approach
The study is the most comprehensive brain-body investigation of its kind, combining electrogastrography (EGG), which captures the rhythmic activity of the stomach, with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) of the brain. By analyzing data from hundreds of participants — far exceeding the size of previous studies — the team uncovered a robust link between stomach-brain communication and mental health status.
“The unique scale and depth of the Visceral Mind Project allowed us to apply sophisticated machine learning techniques, enhancing both the sensitivity and robustness of our analyses,” says lead author Dr Leah Banellis.
Butterflies in the stomach
Prof. Micah Allen and his group expected that stronger alignment between the body and brain would be beneficial. However, their findings suggest the opposite:
“Heightened stomach-brain communication could act more like a warning signal, an internal alarm system reflecting mental strain rather than harmony,” says prof. Micah Allen.
In that context, common phrases like "butterflies in the stomach" or feeling “sick to your stomach” now gain physiological legitimacy as markers of emotional distress.
Anxiety, depression, stress, and fatigue were the mental health challenges most clearly associated with stomach-brain communication. The findings open possibilities for new treatments that can stabilize or restore healthy stomach-brain rhythms.
Paving the way for new treatments
While Dr Leah Banellis stresses that further research is needed before clinical applications, “the findings clearly position the stomach as a promising new window into mental health.”
Future therapeutic directions might include dietary interventions or pharmacological tools like GLP-1 agonists — a class of popular weight-loss drugs known to affect stomach activity but not yet explored for their potential to modulate stomach-brain connections. Non-invasive techniques such as vagus nerve stimulation or focused ultrasound could also shed new light on how the stomach and brain influences each other in order to pave the way for potential innovative therapies to relieve anxiety and depression.
Next steps
Looking ahead, prof. Micah Allen’s and his group will focus on causality — whether changes in the stomach influences the brain, the other way around, or a dynamic interplay of both.
To this end, the research group plans interrelated steps: clinical studies involving patients with diagnosed anxiety or depression, longitudinal research tracking gut-brain communication over time, and trials testing new interventions to modify this relationship.
Read more about Micah Allen and his research
Micah forsker i mavefornemmelser. Hans teori er, at vores beslutninger sjældent er helt rationelle, men at vi i høj grad påvirkes af...