Gut Feeling: The Mind and the Microbiome

Why do some people feel better on psychiatric medications, while others mainly get side effects or very little benefit? One possible part of the answer may lie in the gut. Trillions of microbes live in our intestines, helping us break down food and producing chemicals that can affect both the immune system and the brain. My research asks whether these microbes can also change how psychiatric medicines work in the body.
We combine large clinical datasets with laboratory experiments to study how things like antibiotic use and differences in the gut microbiome are linked to treatment response and side effects. We are also building a “drug–microbiome interaction” resource: we sequence people’s gut microbes, measure key microbial chemicals, and test in the lab whether specific microbes can directly alter medicines or the molecules that control inflammation and metabolism.
The aim is very practical: to move towards more personalised prescribing, i.e., working out who is most likely to respond well, who might be at higher risk of side effects, and which changeable factors (including the microbiome) we could target to improve outcomes

My brain is on the side of an Oxford department largely because I was in the right place when the world shut down. While the brain might be ordinary, the waves themselves are extraordinary. The rhythm carved into the building is called alpha and it is one of the most robust and ubiquitous signals the human brain produces. Far from decorative, alpha rhythms reveal something fundamental about how the mind works. In my research, I use alpha as a window into attentional and action selection. By tracking these rhythms, we can see how the brain decides what to focus on, what to ignore, and what to do next, helping us adapt to a constantly changing world.