How does the nervous system monitor and regulate the body’s internal organs? We are getting closer to the answer.
Have you ever heard of interoception? This process is (still) little known, but it is through it that the nervous system monitors and interprets internal signals to maintain stable essential functions.
Now, explains , researchers at Scripps Research and the Allen Institute have received the Transformative Research Award from the NIH (US National Institutes of Health) to develop the first comprehensive map — or atlas — of this internal sensory network.
“My team is honored that the NIH supports the type of collaborative science needed to study such a complex system,” says Ardem Patapoutian, a Nobel Prize-winning researcher who coordinates the project.
They are more than 12 million euros at stake: the objective is to put interoception on people’s radar, and remove it from the ignorance to which it is relegated.
“We hope our results will help other scientists ask new questions about how internal organs and the nervous system stay in tune,” adds researcher Li Ye.
Now, the team will map the way sensory neurons connect to a variety of internal organs, including the heart and gastrointestinal tract.
“Interoception is fundamental to virtually every aspect of health, but it remains a largely unexplored frontier of neuroscience,” laments Xin Jin, a fellow at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.
“By creating the first atlas of this system, we intend to launch the basis for a better understanding of how the brain keeps the body in balancehow this balance can be disturbed in illness and how we can restore it”, he assures.
