An Unsuspecting Gut Microbiome Shapes Neurological Health
- AgInnovation
- May 12
- 3 min read
Our brains govern our bodies, shaping our thoughts, movements and speech. But deep in our guts are powerful signals that can influence the brain. An LSU AgCenter Nutritional Microbiome Researcher explores how diet influences neurological health.
By LSU AgCenter Communications and the School of Nutrition and Food Sciences — summarized for agInnovation
Our brains may command our thoughts, movements, and speech, but an unexpected partner deep within the gut plays a powerful role in shaping neurological health. At the Louisiana State University (LSU) AgCenter, nutritional microbiome researcher Ezgi Özcan is uncovering how diet and gut microbes communicate with the brain—and how that relationship can be harnessed to prevent or treat neurological disease across the lifespan.
Özcan’s research spans early childhood through older adulthood, with a focus on pediatric epilepsy and neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s. One of her recent studies examined how ketogenic diets—low in carbohydrates and high in fat—protect against seizures in children with epilepsy. While ketogenic diets have been used for decades, Özcan’s work revealed a missing piece: dietary fiber.
During her time at the University of California, Los Angeles, Özcan and her collaborators found that fiber‑deficient ketogenic formulas failed to provide full seizure protection in mouse models. When fiber was added, seizure protection improved significantly. To reach these findings, Özcan developed an innovative infant gut microbiome model using nine key bacterial species and tested diets in specialized anaerobic chambers that mimic human gut conditions. The results suggest that fiber, through its interaction with gut bacteria, is essential to the diet’s effectiveness.
Building on this foundation at the LSU AgCenter, Özcan is expanding her work beyond epilepsy to explore how dietary fats interact with the gut microbiome and influence brain health later in life. Her lab is investigating how these interactions may affect Alzheimer’s disease, noting that memory loss and seizures share overlapping brain circuits.
Graduate students in the MinD‑Gut Lab are helping advance this work. Ph.D. student Tharindu Trishan Dapana Durage is identifying microbial “signatures” associated with Alzheimer’s disease across different populations, with the goal of developing earlier interventions. Meanwhile, Ph.D. student Shubhi Mishra is studying how dietary fats shape the infant gut microbiome and gut barrier—the critical interface between food, microbes and the immune system.
Özcan emphasizes that the gut lining is a central communication hub linking the gut and brain through immune signaling, metabolites and neural pathways such as the vagus nerve. Her lab is also investigating how cooking oils and nut‑based fats may influence appetite by increasing natural gut hormones like GLP‑1, which regulate hunger and satiety.
Ultimately, Özcan’s work points toward a future of precision nutrition—diets designed not only for people, but for the trillions of microbes they harbor. By decoding the conversation between food, gut bacteria and the brain, her research aims to develop microbiota‑targeted nutritional strategies to support neurological health and disease prevention at every stage of life.
Read the full story: LSU AgCenter Gut Microbiome Research Explores How Diet Influences Neurological Health
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