![]() ![]() It is also of prime importance in the conveyance of motor and sensory pathways from the rest of the brain to the body, and from the body back to the brain. ![]() Other roles include the regulation of the central nervous system and the body's sleep cycle. Ten pairs of cranial nerves come from the brainstem. It also provides the main motor and sensory nerve supply to the face and neck via the cranial nerves. : 195 It has the critical roles of regulating cardiac, and respiratory function, helping to control heart rate and breathing rate. The brainstem is very small, making up around only 2.6 percent of the brain's total weight. : 152 The midbrain is continuous with the thalamus of the diencephalon through the tentorial notch. In the human brain the brainstem is composed of the midbrain, the pons, and the medulla oblongata. The brainstem (or brain stem) is the stalk-like : 152 part of the brain that interconnects the cerebrum and diencephalon with the spinal cord. The new review paper, from first author Wenwen Cheng, Ph.D., Myers, Pers, and their colleagues, integrates these findings with other recent discoveries to build a new model of brainstem neuronal circuits and how they control food intake and nausea.A 3D medical animation still shot showing different parts of the midbrain. Pers and his group used single cell mapping of brain cells within the dorsal vagal complex, a region in the brain stem that mediates a host of unconscious processes, including feelings of satiety (or sickness) after eating. The recent review builds on recent findings in mice from the Myers lab that revealed the existence of two different food intake-suppressing brain stem circuits- one that causes nausea and disgust, and one that does not, as well as from collaborations with colleague Tune Pers, Ph.D., of the University of Copenhagen. ![]() The brain stem is super important in the control of feeding because it takes all sorts of information from your gut, including whether the stomach is distended and whether nutrients have been ingested, and integrates this with information from the hypothalamus about nutritional needs before passing it all on to the rhythmic pattern generators that control food intake," said Martin Myers, Jr., M.D., Ph.D., professor of internal medicine and Molecular & Integrative Physiology and director of the Elizabeth Weiser Caswell Diabetes Institute. "Everything the hypothalamus does ends up converging in the brainstem. To date, scientists interested in how and why people gain weight and the diseases that can result from overeating and obesity have focused on a part of the brain called the hypothalamus, following discoveries of two intertwined systems that play important roles in controlling energy balance, the leptin and melanocortin systems.Ī paper in the journal Nature Metabolism looks outside this brain region and reviews the various brain pathways that meet in the brain stem to control feeding behavior, using a technique that offers an unbiased look at the neurons involved. This brain region also helps us decide when we are "full" and should stop eating. How this decision is made turns out to be so fundamental to our wellbeing - determining what foods to seek and avoid - that the signals are coordinated within the most primitive parts of our brains, the brain stem or hindbrain. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |