Highlights
- •Sensory and motor pathways of the gut-brain axis share common neurons in the brain.
- •These shared sensory-motor neurons exist in regions of the hind-, mid-, and forebrain.
- •Within nearly all regions assessed, ~50% of gut-brain neurons were sensory-motor neurons.
- •Central gut-brain neurons receiving sensory- or motor-only feedback were also observed.
- •These data provide an anatomical basis for sensory-motor feedback loops in the gut-brain axis.
Abstract
The neural gut-brain axis consists of viscerosensory and autonomic motor neurons innervating
the gastrointestinal (GI) tract. Sensory neurons transmit nutrient-related and non-nutrient-related
information to the brain, while motor neurons regulate GI motility and secretion.
Previous research provides an incomplete picture of the brain nuclei that are directly
connected with the neural gut-brain axis, and no studies have thoroughly assessed
sensory-motor overlap in those nuclei. Our goal in this study was to comprehensively
characterize the central sensory and motor circuitry associated with the neural gut-brain
axis linked to a segment of the small intestine. We injected a retrograde (pseudorabies;
PRV) and anterograde (herpes simplex virus 1; HSV) transsynaptic viral tracer into
the duodenal wall of adult male rats. Immunohistochemical processing revealed single-
and double-labeled cells that were quantified per nucleus. We found that across nearly
all brain regions assessed, PRV + HSV immunoreactive neurons comprised the greatest
percentage of labeled cells compared with single-labeled PRV or HSV neurons. These
results indicate that even though sensory and motor information can be processed by
separate neuronal populations, there is neuroanatomical evidence of direct sensory-motor
feedback in the neural gut-brain axis throughout the entire caudal-rostral extent
of the brain. This is the first study to exhaustively investigate the sensory-motor
organization of the neural gut-brain axis, and is a step toward phenotyping the many
central neuronal populations involved in GI control.
Keywords
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Article info
Publication history
Published online: February 15, 2020
Accepted:
February 14,
2020
Received in revised form:
January 27,
2020
Received:
September 5,
2019
Identification
Copyright
© 2020 Published by Elsevier B.V.
