Scientists believe brain and gut are closely linked than thought. The "gut-brain axis" may help you remember where you ate by directing signals to another part of the brain, the hippocampus, the memory center, found study published in Nature Communications. The body's longest nerve, the vagus nerve, is the autobahn between what scientists have referred to as the "two brains" -- the one in your head and the other in your gastrointestinal tract. The nerve is key for telling you the tank is full and to put the fork down because it helps transmit biochemical signals from the stomach to the most primitive part of the brain, the brainstem.
‘New study gives a possible explanation for food's prominence in memory. Gut instinct may have been the GPS of human ancestors.’
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But in this animal study, researchers may have found a greater purpose behind this complex circuitry involving the vagus nerve. v
Following our stomach The scientists believe that this gut instinct, this connection between spatial awareness and food, is likely a neurobiological mechanism that dates back ages to when the definition of fast food was a herd of deer running away from the nomadic hunters who tracked them.
Back then especially, it would be critical for the gut to work with the brain like a Waze or Google Maps navigation app, said Scott Kanoski, an assistant professor of biological sciences at USC Dornsife and corresponding author of the paper. Those wandering early humans could remember a site where they had found and collected food and return repeatedly for more.
"When animals find and eat a meal, for instance, the vagus nerve is activated and this global positioning system is engaged," Kanoski said. "It would be advantageous for an animal to remember their external environment so that they could have food again."
Disruption disorients the internal compass
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"We saw impairments in hippocampal-dependent memory when we cut off the communication between the gut and the brain," said lead author Andrea Suarez, a PhD candidate in biological sciences. "These memory deficits were coupled with harmful neurobiological outcomes in the hippocampus."
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However, it did not appear to affect the rats' anxiety levels or their weight, the scientists noted.
The scientists wrote that their findings may raise an important and timely medical question that merits further exploration: Could bariatric surgeries or other therapies that block gut-to-brain signaling affect memory?
Source-Eurekalert