What Happens in The Brain When We Vomit? We May Have Just Found Out

Vomiting is a key way for the body to expel toxins from food that has been contaminated. The process from go to throw was tracked in mice by a team of researchers.

Strangely, mice don't vomit because they're too small and their muscles are weak.

It is a good sign that they do retch.

The neural mechanism of retching is similar to that of vomiting, according to a neuroscience researcher.

We were able to build a paradigm for studying toxin-induced retching in mice with which we could look into the defensive responses from the brain to toxins.

The researchers observed wide mouth opening actions in the animals, as well as contraction of the abdominal muscles, after giving them a sample of the staphylococcal Enterotoxin A.

Through a process of fluorescent labeling, it was shown that SEA in the gut activated the release of a neurotransmitter. The vagus nerves are the main connection between the gut and the brain.

The retching decreased when the Tac1+DVC neurons were deactivated. When the Tac1+DVC neurons were turned off, the mice were less nauseatingly affected by doxorubicin.

The study will help us better understand the mechanisms of vomiting and nausea, which will help us develop better medications.

Future studies could look at how toxins interact with enterochromaffin cells in order to cause vomiting in people.

The study could have taught us more about food poisoning and cancer. The results suggest that the body produces similar defensive responses to both, but further studies are needed to determine the relevance of the results to our own biology.

The research could lead to better anti-nausea medications for people who are undergoing courses of chemotherapy, allowing the prescribed drugs to fight cancer with less of the uncomfortable side effects.

Our body is capable of expelling toxic substances when we encounter a lot of pathogens.

Our body attempts to remove the coronaviruses by coughing. It's a new field of research about how the brain knows when a pathogen is present and how to fight it.

The research has appeared in a journal.