Gut Microbiota composition is Associated with Individual Differences in Human Face recognition

Emerging evidence suggests that the gut microbiota plays a role in human cognitive function; however, large-scale, population- based studies are scarce. Here, we examined associations between gut microbial composition and face recognition memory in 661 healthy and depressed adults from the German Marburg Münster Affective Cohort Study (MACS) cohort. Participants completed a face recognition task and provided stool samples for 16S rRNA sequencing. We quantified akpha diversity, beta diversity, and genus-level abundances, applying ANOVA, PERMANOVA, MaAsLin3, and random forest models while controlling for several factors, including age, sex, BMI, history of depression and its score, education, and relevant interactions. While alpha diversity was unrelated to face recognition, beta diversity showed a significant effect on memory recognition. This suggests that the overall gut microbiota composition is linked to an individual’s ability to recognize faces they have seen within the past 15 minutes. Finally, we identified the genus Dialister as being negatively associated with memory performance, a relationship that persisted significantly after full covariate adjustment. In random forest analyses, Dialister emerged as the second-most important predictor, on par with age and depression, thereby indicating a robust association with memory performance. Our results replicate prior work linking gut community structure to memory and pinpoint Dialister as a candidate taxon underlying the interaction between the gut microbiota and human memory