Food for Thought: The Relationship Between Food, Gut and Brain

Find out how your diet affects your brain, and your brain affects your diet

Please note this course runs without facilitation. A Spanish version of the course can be found here.

Over the last few years, the importance of the link between gut and brain has become clear. On this course you’ll explore this complex relationship.

You’ll learn how the brain works, and is affected by diet and nutritional deficiencies. You’ll also discover less known, cutting-edge subjects such as the gut-brain axis, the microbiome, and the relationship between food and reproductive health.

This course is open to everyone, but may be of particular interest to psychologists or people working in health and well-being. No previous experience is required, though a background knowledge of biology or psychology may help.

The Educators won’t be able to join the discussions themselves or respond to individual comments, but the course encourages a strong learning community. The learning is focused around debate and discussion – supporting other learners, sharing your own experience and knowledge, and listening to new perspectives. We hope that you will enjoy interacting with and learning from each other in this way. Don’t forget to comment, reply to other learners and ‘like’ comments.

• Introduction
• Welcome to the course
• Introduction to the brain and cognition
• Responses to feeding, reward systems and food addiction
• The reward system and response to feeding
• Food addiction
• Cognitive and emotional influences on food behaviors
• Emotions and food intake
• Cognition and food intake
• Brain, mind and our diet
• Food and our brain: the good...
• ... and the bad
• Gut-brain axis and the microbiome
• Microbiome and the gut-brain axis
• Microbiome and the brain