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posted by Fnord666 on Sunday September 23 2018, @10:53PM   Printer-friendly
from the gut-feeling dept.

Your gut is directly connected to your brain, by a newly discovered neuron circuit:

The human gut is lined with more than 100 million nerve cells—it's practically a brain unto itself. And indeed, the gut actually talks to the brain, releasing hormones into the bloodstream that, over the course of about 10 minutes, tell us how hungry it is, or that we shouldn't have eaten an entire pizza. But a new study reveals the gut has a much more direct connection to the brain through a neural circuit that allows it to transmit signals in mere seconds. The findings could lead to new treatments for obesity, eating disorders, and even depression and autism—all of which have been linked to a malfunctioning gut.

The study reveals "a new set of pathways that use gut cells to rapidly communicate with ... the brain stem," says Daniel Drucker, a clinician-scientist who studies gut disorders at the Lunenfeld-Tanenbaum Research Institute in Toronto, Canada, who was not involved with the work. Although many questions remain before the clinical implications become clear, he says, "This is a cool new piece of the puzzle."

[...] Additional clues about how gut sensory cells benefit us today lie in a separate study, published today in Cell. Researchers used lasers to stimulate the sensory neurons that innervate the gut in mice, which produced rewarding sensations the rodents worked hard to repeat. The laser stimulation also increased levels of a mood-boosting neurotransmitter called dopamine in the rodents' brains, the researchers found.

Combined, the two papers help explain why stimulating the vagus nerve with electrical current can treat severe depression in people, says Ivan de Araujo, a neuroscientist at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York City, who led the Cell study. The results may also explain why, on a basic level, eating makes us feel good. "Even though these neurons are outside the brain, they perfectly fit the definition of reward neurons" that drive motivation and increase pleasure, he says.


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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 24 2018, @03:57PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 24 2018, @03:57PM (#739210)

    I think there are certainly charlatans that get in on the action, but there has been some pretty interesting research that points to the ability of your gut bacteria to signal your brain; likewise cases where people that needed to get a microbiome transplant (Ewww) ended up craving different types of foods, ones that more closely matched those of their donor.

    It makes sense from a bacterial point of view to attempt to control the behavior of your host to improve your chances of survival.