Project description
Insight into the brain–gut axis
Emerging evidence indicates a reciprocal interaction between the gut and the brain, with gastrointestinal disorders presenting with various brain alterations and vice versa. Scientists of the EU-funded BrainGutAnalytics project aim to obtain a deeper understanding of the nature and operation of this gut–brain axis. Using a multiomics approach that combines neuroimaging, clinical diagnostics and microbial profiling, they will identify suitable gastrointestinal phenotypes and correlate them with biomarkers. These biomarkers will form the basis for a new diagnostic system as well as for the design of drugs and precision treatment for both neurological and gastrointestinal disorders.
Objective
An intimate yet less known relation between human brain and gut is rapidly emerging as several recent studies have identified various alterations within brain as a result of gastrointestinal disorders and reported comparable variations in gastrointestinal system due to altered brain outputs. These relationships are collectively termed as brain-gut axis and a deeper understanding of its exact nature and operation can lead to development of novel diagnosis, drugs and precision treatment for both neurological and gastrointestinal disorders.
The first step towards establishing a comprehensive understanding of brain-gut axis is to identify suitable phenotypes that can be used to describe certain disease state and serve as basis for further investigations into operation of brain-gut axis. In this study, a multiomics based data analysis approach is proposed to search for exclusive and generalizable phenotypes of a certain gastrointestinal disorder. Our multiomics data consist of multimodal imagery of brain and gut, clinical diagnostics, microbial profiling, questionnaire based disease evaluations, genetic and molecular representations taken from carefully designed cohorts of patients and healthy controls. Our data analyses will employ a variety of techniques including digital image processing, computer vision, machine learning and statistical methods to determine covariate factors in omics, which will be then used to identify representative biomarkers for gastrointestinal disorders.
We also aim to develop a novel diagnosis system for gastrointestinal disease based on novel biomarkers through a combination of neuroimaging and digital image processing pipeline . Our research is expected to excel the existing knowledge on brain-gut axis by exposing critical phenotypes, employing them for early diagnostic and paving way towards deeper understanding of brain-gut axis.
Fields of science
- natural sciencescomputer and information sciencesdata science
- social sciencesmedia and communicationsgraphic design
- natural sciencescomputer and information sciencesartificial intelligencecomputer vision
- natural sciencescomputer and information sciencesartificial intelligencemachine learning
- medical and health sciencesclinical medicinegastroenterology
Programme(s)
Funding Scheme
MSCA-IF - Marie Skłodowska-Curie Individual Fellowships (IF)Coordinator
5021 Bergen
Norway