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Hey, there’s a second brain in your gut
Scientists have known for years that there is a "second brain" of autonomous neurons in your long, winding digestive tract, but that’s where their knowledge of the so-called abdominal brain ended.
Now, in new research, scientists have cataloged 12 different types of neurons in the enteric nervous system (ENS) of mice. This "fundamental knowledge" opens up many pathways for new experiments and findings.
The gut brain significantly impacts your body’s functioning. Your digestive system has daily tasks as part of your metabolism, but it is also subject to fluctuations in functionality and is connected to your emotions.
Digestive symptoms and anxiety can be comorbid, and your gut is heavily affected by stress. Scientists believe that better understanding what happens in your ENS could lead to better drugs and treatments for a variety of conditions, as well as a deeper understanding of the connection between the enteric nervous system and the central nervous system.
The new research appears in Nature Neuroscience. Scientist Julia Ganz explains what the researchers found and why it’s so important:
“Using single-cell RNA sequencing to profile the juvenile and developing enteric nervous system, the authors discovered a conceptually new model of neuronal diversification in the ENS and established a new molecular taxonomy of enteric neurons based on a large number of molecular markers.”
Neuronal diversification occurs in, well, all organisms that have neurons. Like stem cells, neurons first develop as more generic “blanks” and then as functional specialties. The human brain has types like sensory and motor neurons, each of which has subtypes. In fact, there are so many subtypes that scientists are still unsure how to fully catalog them.
Neurons of the same superficial type are different in the brain than in the brainstem, and even more so in the digestive tract. Therefore, researchers had to start from scratch and trace how these neurons develop. They tracked RNA, which determines how DNA is expressed in cells produced by your body, to follow how the neurons formed before and after birth. Some specialties emerge in the womb, and others divide and form later.
To uncover this new information, scientists developed a finer way to separate and identify cells. Ganz explains:
“Using extensive co-staining with established markers, they were able to link the twelve classes of neurons with the previously discovered molecular characteristics of functional enteric neuron types, thus classifying the ENS into excitatory and inhibitory motor neurons, interneurons, and primary intrinsic afferent neurons.”
With a sharper protocol and new information, the researchers were able to confirm and expand the existing body of knowledge about ENS neurons. And now they can work to discover what each of the 12 types of ENS neurons is responsible for, they say.
By isolating different types and “activating” or deactivating them using genetic information, scientists can attempt to identify what’s missing in the function of the mouse enteric nervous system. And studying these genes could lead to new treatments that use stem cells or RNA to control the expression of harmful genes.
