In a new paper published in iScience, a team led by Neurobiology's Eva Naumann and former Neurobiology graduate student Minel Arinel shows that rapid gut-to-brain communication is already functional in early development, using larval zebrafish as a model. The researchers developed a novel method to deliver enteric stimuli during calcium imaging, revealing that gut distension alone drives widespread neural responses. These findings underscore mechanosensation as a dominant visceral stimulus at this developmental stage.
Read the article in iScience.
*Illustration credit to Julius Naumann with digital rendering by Minel Arinel