sparkleI’m a Scientist is like school science lessons meet the X Factor! School students choose which scientist gets a prize of $1000 to communicate their work.
Scientists and students talk on this website. They both break down barriers, have fun and learn. But only the students get to vote.
This zone is the Organs Zone. It has scientists studying health and disease in various parts of our bodies. Who gets the prize? YOU decide!
Hi sparkle- thank you for your excellent question!
I answered something similar for other students but I’ll try and give an overview of what the mini brain is. The brain and spinal cord control most of your body’s function and behaviour as well as your digestive system. The amazing thing is that the digestive system actually has it’s own nervous system – the enteric nervous system (ENS) which is situated within the layers of the gut. We call it the ‘mini-brain’ because it is like a control center for the digestive system. It has to coordinate the complex behaviour of digestion, absorption, secretion and motility/movement. If you cut the connection from the brain, the ENS can still function to digest, absorb and move intestinal content along your gut.
To do this, your digestive system has special cells which ‘taste’ the environment/food. These cells send the message along to interneurons which process the information and decide on a response.The processed signal is sent to motorneurons which bring about an action – muscle contracts and relaxes to push along the intestinal contents, glands secreting acids/enzymes/neurotransmitters to help the digestive process.
Hope this helps to answer your question!
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