Brain and Body More Linked Than Scientists Thought
New findings reveal that nerves can cause fainting, drop blood pressure, and could perhaps support cancers.
Evidence is growing that the brain and body are more intertwined than was perviously realised.
The discoveries show that scientists have shifted how they view the nervous system’s function. The nervous system sends signals around the body, controlling your thoughts, movements, and automatic responses.
However, analysts are just starting to explore the nervous system’s link to bodily processes. A study published on 1st November by Nature revealed how the brain connects to the fainting response.
In the report, scientist Jonathan Lovelace and colleagues “identified a genetically defined neural pathway.” This pathway is where the heart and brain connect when someone loses consciousness due to fainting.
The paper also said that the brain pathway plays a part in other fainting bodily responses, such as pupil dilation, eye-rolling, and flopping muscles.
The study continues into a research area studied earlier by scientists at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis.
In April, Gordon Dosenbach, an associate professor of neurobiology at the college, and his colleagues published a paper stating that the mind and body are interlinked.
Old Study, New Findings
Dosenbach said, “The brain is for successfully behaving in the environment so you can achieve your goals without hurting or killing yourself. You move your body for a reason. Of course, the motor areas must be connected to executive function and control of basic bodily processes, like blood pressure and pain. Pain is the most powerful feedback, right? You do something, and it hurts, and you think, ‘I’m not doing that again.'”
However before these papers, there have been several clues pointing towards the two biological systems connecting.
In 1930, neurosurgeon Wilder Penfield surveyed motor brain areas belonging to people undergoing brain surgery by applying minor tiny zaps. Penfield found that animating small tissue strips in the brain causes specific body parts to twitch.
Nearly a hundred years later, Dosenbach tried replicating Penfield’s study. However, he realized that Penfield’s neurological map needed to be corrected.
Dosenbach said he found “alternative interpretations that had been ignored. We pulled together a lot of different data in addition to our own observations, and zoomed out and synthesized it, and came up with a new way of thinking about how the body and the mind are tied together.”
He added, “Penfield was brilliant, and his ideas have been dominant for 90 years, and it created a blind spot in the field.”
The brain condition list detailing conditions that affect the body is long and growing. Some scientists suggest that a mother with an infection during pregnancy could lead to babies developing autism spectrum disorder. More research is needed to confirm or deny this idea.
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