What evolved first – our brain or gut?
What if the brain evolved to serve the gut? Scientists at Flinders University are challenging a cornerstone of biology, arguing that the gut’s nervous system may […]
Gut-brain communication turned on its axis
The mechanisms by which antidepressants and other emotion-focused medications work could be reconsidered due to an important new breakthrough in the understanding of how the gut […]
Global optogenetics experts share big developments at Flinders meeting
Major recent advances in the field of optogenetics – which uses light instead of drugs to control specific cells in the body – will be shared […]
Treating gut pain via a Nobel prize-winning receptor
Targeting a receptor responsible for our sense of touch and temperature, which researchers have now found to be present in our colon, could provide a new […]
Silencing gut pain without pain killers
Surgically removing specific populations of sensory nerves that communicate between internal organs, such as the bladder and gut, and the brain, can silence pain responses without […]
How the gut communicates with the brain
How the ‘second brain’ – the enteric nervous system in our gut – communicates with our first brain has been one of the most challenging questions […]
New insights into the formation of faeces
New research from Flinders University has uncovered further details on how the guinea pig gut forms solid faecal pellets, providing potential insights that could help in […]
New insights into our ‘first brain’ – in the gut
New research explains how the nervous system in the gut causes propulsion along the gut, highlighting similar behaviour to other neural networks in the brain and […]
Nerve finding unravels gut mysteries
Scientists at Flinders University have, for the first time, identified a specific type of sensory nerve ending in the gut and how these may ‘talk’ to […]