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A Gut Check for Many Ailments

The gut—considered as a single digestive organ that includes the esophagus, stomach and intestines—has its own nervous system that allows it to operate independently from the brain.

This enteric nervous system is known among researchers as the "gut brain." It controls organs including the pancreas and gall bladder via nerve connections. Hormones and neurotransmitters generated in the gut interact with organs such as the lungs and heart.

Like the brain and spinal cord, the gut is filled with nerve cells. The small intestine alone has 100 million neurons, roughly equal to the amount found in the spinal cord, says Michael Gershon, a professor at Columbia University.

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 Hey, There's a Second Brain in Your Gut

Now, in new research, scientists have catalogued 12 different kinds of neurons in the enteric nervous system (ENS) of mice. This “fundamental knowledge” unlocks a huge number of paths to new experiments and findings.

 It Takes Guts: An Interview with Dr. Michael D. Gershon

Dr. Michael D. Gershon is all about the gut. Renowned for his pioneering work on the enteric nervous system and the role of serotonin within it, he’s been respectfully dubbed the “father of neurogastroenterology.” As the author of “The Second Brain: A Groundbreaking New Understanding of Nervous Disorders of the Stomach and Intestine,” he has received widespread academic recognition and made numerous media appearances throughout the years.

 The enteric nervous system: “A little brain in the gut”

The gut’s own autonomous nervous system, the enteric nervous system (ENS), has fascinated scientists for more than 100 years. It functions, in the true sense of the word, autonomously, by performing complex tasks and controlling vital functions independently of extrinsic inputs.

 The gut, its microbiome, and the brain: connections and communications

Modern research on gastrointestinal behavior has revealed it to be a highly complex bidirectional process in which the gut sends signals to the brain, via spinal and vagal visceral afferent pathways, and receives sympathetic and parasympathetic inputs.

 The second brain: a groundbreaking new understanding of nervous disorders of the stomach and intestine

Dr. Gershon's groundbreaking book fills the gap between what you need to know-and what your doctor has time to tell you. Dr. Michael Gershon has devoted his career to understanding the human bowel (the stomach, esophagus, small intestine, and colon). His thirty years of research have led to an extraordinary rediscovery: nerve cells in the gut that act as a brain. This "second brain" can control our gut all by itself. Our two brains-the one in our head and the one in our bowel-must cooperate. If they do not, then there is chaos in the gut and misery in the head-everything from "butterflies" to cramps, from diarrhea to constipation.

Articles of Interest

How the bacteria in our gut affect our cravings for food

The gut mini-brain produces a wide range of hormones and contains many of the same neurotransmitters as the brain. The gut also contains neurons that are located in the walls of the gut in a distributed network known as the enteric nervous system. In fact, there are more of these neurons in the gut than in the entire spinal cord. The enteric nervous system communicates to the brain via the brain-gut axis and signals flow in both directions. The brain-gut axis is thought to be involved in many regular functions and systems within the healthy body, including the regulation of eating.

Hungry? Your Stomach Really Does Have a Mind of Its Own

The "gut brain," formally known as the enteric nervous system, is made up of some 500 million nerve cells, as many as there are in a cat's brain. They help to control muscular contractions in the gut as well as the secretions of glands and cells. And they help balance hunger and satiety, or the sense of being full, communicating those states to the big brain.

The Other Brain Also Deals With Many Woes

The role of the enteric nervous system is to manage every aspect of digestion, from the esophagus to the stomach, small intestine and colon. The second brain, or little brain, accomplishes all that with the same tools as the big brain, a sophisticated nearly self-contained network of neural circuitry, neurotransmitters and proteins.

The thoughtful bowel

The authors present a great deal of evidence that the neuroscientific substrates of learning and adaptation are present in the ENS. There is evidence for at least relatively long-term alterations of responses of the small intestine to stretching, of the stomach to distension and, in general, of enteric reflexes to conditioning

You Talking to Me? Says the Enteric Nervous System (ENS) to the Microbe. How Intestinal Microbes Interact with the ENS

The neurons of the ENS communicate with each other using the same “language” as in the central nervous system.

Resources

Dr. Michael Gershon

It seems that Dr. Gershon has made it his life's mission to discover and document the workings of the "gut-brain", or the nougaty center of truthiness that lies at the center of us all. It seems that the gut is uniquely privileged in being able to assert that the brain is not the boss of it.