From: J. R. Molloy (jr@shasta.com)
Date: Sun Dec 19 1999 - 18:07:16 MST
The Second Brain: The Enteric Nervous System
The gut contains a very large number of nerve cells, the enteric nervous system,
which can act independently of the brain to control movement of food, its mixing
with digestive juices and its absorption into the blood stream. Over the last 2
decades we have identified the types of nerve cells that control the movement of
food within the gut and we have identified the ways that these nerve cells
communicate with each other. The major goal of this project is to use the
information to determine the way in which the whole system acts to control the
movements of the gut.
Because the system is so complex one approach to this problem is to build models
containing as few simplifications as is reasonably possible, given constraints
on computing power and software development time. We have developed a computer
program, Plexus, to do this. With it we can analyse the roles of different of
different types of enteric neurons that can be distinguished by their chemical
contents and so represent different targets for drug therapy. The connections
between different types of neurons can be altered systematically to allow the
effects of changes in communication between neurons to be studied for the whole
system.
http://plexus.physiol.unimelb.edu.au/ang/ang.htm
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