2009
Bertrand PP and Bertrand RL (2009) Serotonin release and uptake in the gastrointestinal tract. Review - abstract
How does your intestine deal with all the stuff you give it?
For a start, the brain is just not really involved in the process, it's taking care of more important things like remembering what happened in Master Chef last night
Did you know that if you take your intestine out of your body it keeps working (but you don't)
This is what your gut looks like if you peel it apart and make it black and white (this drawing was made by some colleagues [JBF, MC, JCB, etc... modified by moi])
The mucosa is what touches the food. All the fingers (villi) are there to increase the surface area available for dealing with the food (digestion and absorption). "plexus" indicates neurons, "muscle" means, you guessed it (i'm also going to assume you know what an artery is). The number of neurons in the gut is the same as the number you have in your spinal cord!
The neurons and muscle work together to mix all the food up and move it along for pooping out at the end after you've extracted as many nutrients as you can. If your gut works properly, be very happy (there's a lot that can go wrong)
My particular focus is on how all these neurons communicate - synaptic transmission. The gut has a wide variety of neurotransmitters it uses to accomplish all the different tasks it has to perform. And, all the different transmitters have many receptors that they act at, argh!
This now ends your crash course in neurogastroenterology
So here is my contribution to science/society/the greater good...
2008
Monro RL, Bornstein JC & Bertrand PP (2008) Synaptic Transmission from the Submucosal Plexus to the Myenteric Plexus in Guinea-Pig Ileum - abstract, PDF (284 kb)
Bertrand PP, Hu X, Mach J and Bertrand RL (2008) Serotonin (5-HT) release and uptake measured by real-time electrochemical techniques in the rat ileum - abstract, PDF (678 kb)
