Scientists believe that new research has revealed that our hearts have a “little brain” that controls them and play a key role in maintaining and controlling your heartbeat. When a heart is taken out of a person, provided it is kept under the very conditions that it needs to be transplanted, it will continue to beat. Why is that?
Scientists think new research has uncovered the answer. Their findings indicate that the heart seems to have a “little brain” that helps control your heartbeat and works alongside your brain.
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The study was led by Konstantinos Ampatzis, principle researcher and docent at the department of Neuroscience at Karolinska Institutet, Sweden.
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Ampatzis said: “We were surprised to see how complex the nervous system within the heart is. Understanding this system better could lead to new insights into heart disease and help develop new treatments for diseases such as arrhythmias.”
It was always believed that the intracardiac nervous system was a simple structure that received its orders from the brain; however new research now challenges this long held belief by scientists.
This new research looked at the heart of zebrafish because, surprisingly, the animal’s hearts have lots of similarities with our own.
By studying this heart, scientists were able to map out the organisation and the function of neurons in the heart and have found a small group of neurons that had the properties of a pacemaker.
Scientists were able to accomplish this using single cell RNA sequencing, anatomical studies, and electrophysical techniques.
Ampatzis, the lead researcher said, “We will now continue to investigate how the heart’s brain interacts with the actual brain to regulate heart function under different conditions such as exercise, stress, or disease. We aim to identify new therapeutic targets by examining how disruptions in the heart’s neuronal network contribute to different health disorders.”
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