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Neurotransmitter in the Belly

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Hi all,

 

I'm writing a little essay about body, mind and performance. Now I'd like to write about Neurotransmitter that are present in the belly and not just in the brain: I remember someone posting about it, but I cannot find the post.

 

Does someone have some interesting links on the subjects ?

It would be great :)

 

thx

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it sounds interesting!

it was not the exact link that I was looking for but still really useful for my work, thx!

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from

http://www.transformations.net.nz/trancescript/neurology.html

 

The Brain In The Abdomen

 

So far, we have talked as if the brain in the head is the central co-ordinator of thought and emotion in the body. In fact, it is only one of three key areas. The other two are the gut (abdomen) and the heart. When the nervous system is developing in a human embryo, the original "neural crest" divides into two sections. One remains in the head, and the other migrates down into the abdomen. Only later are the two systems connected by a two way highway called the Vagus nerve. The abdominal brain, which consists of two centres called the myenteric and the submucosal, has 100 million or so neurons -more than the spinal cord. It is a separate functional brain which plays an important role in emotional responses such as anxiety, and in the processing of information during sleep.

 

The electrical patterns in the gut can be monitored by a machine called an electrogastrogram (EG). Studies with this machine show that the rapid eye movement (REM) sleep, in which dreams occur in the brain, coincides with a time of rapid muscle movements and thinking in the gut, explaining why indigestion is associated with bad dreams (Tache, Wingate and Burks, 1994). New York professor of anatomy Michael Gershon has collated research showing that the brain in the gut learns separately from the brain in the head, and creates its own daily routines which often overide decisions made by the conscious mind (Gershon, 1998).

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Serotonine

yeah, sounds like there's a minor misunderstanding of the term "neurotransmitter" - neurons are not "neurotransmitters" :) although they are neural transmitters :lol:

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