The Nose-Brain Axis

The loss of smell is an incisive event, either caused by mechanical impact or subtly during the process of ageing. Besides effects on psychological, social and behavioral performance and thus affecting the quality of life tremendously, the loss of the sense of smell induces a reorganization in the functional network structure of the human brain. The human body is associated with trillions of microorganisms (the microbiome) which appear to have tremendous effects on health, disease, behavior and other aspects of human life. The composition of the microbiome (and thus its function) changes during the course of life, and in particular diversity-reduced microbial communities seem to be correlated with a variety of symptoms. The microbiome is capable to communicate with the human body cells and affects functions of human tissues and even brain. This project aims to decipher the role of the nasal microbiome, located directly in the olfactory area, by combining imaging biomarkers with measures obtained from microbiome phylogenetic and functional analyses. In the project we will investigate the basic functions and characteristics (diversity and abundance) of the active nasal microbiota and correlate these results with olfactory function. Combined neuroimaging measures from functional and structural connectivity, as well as morphological characteristics will be collected and their correspondence with olfactory function, dysfunction and regain will be investigated. The integrational approach in combining these fields will focus on increasing therapeutic opportunities and monitoring and predicting therapy success in the future. The project will marry two highly uprising fields of human life science microbiome research and neuroimaging. Especially due to the mixture of methods and approaches with aiming at the same target, this proposal has the potential of generating profound knowledge on understanding the sense of smell.