Andy’s Quick Hits (192): How the gut communicates with your brain

Just after publishing an article in leading brains Review on serotonin (which is one of the brain’s main mood chemicals) and stating that the gut and brain’s serotonin systems can be considered separate entities, out comes a piece of research to show that they are not separate entities.

Indeed, it is known that there is a gut-brain connection that I have also reported on multiple times previously: these include how gut bacteria are related to loneliness, how gut bacteria help brain development in preterm babies, and how gut bacteria help make boys smarter!

But researchers are still often in the dark as to how and in what different ways the gut and brain communicate with each other. These researchers at Flinders University in Australia developed a new neural tracing technique that helped to investigate this.

They found that what are known as enterochromaffin cells (a mouthful, I know) that line the gut and are known to respond to, and release neurotransmitters based on stimuli from what is in the gut, communicate to nerve endings. This is done through process of diffusion (they are not directly connected to the central nervous system) and stimulate pathways that go to the spinal cord and brain.