About the episode
Boats, planes, cars, buses, roller coasters and VR glasses: if you are prone to car sickness or motion sickness, it can make a lot of situations very unpleasant and some even impossible.
The sensation of nausea, dizziness and drowsiness that someone who suffers from this may experience is the result of a sensory conflict in the brain. The input from the eyes, muscles and the vestibular organ does not correspond to expectations.
But it is not yet entirely clear in which neurons exactly this goes wrong. Researchers have now tried to find out – with the help of some unfortunate mice.
The mice were carefully placed in a tube in a kind of merry-go-round. After four one-minute rounds, with five-second breaks in between, they checked whether the mice still felt like eating. If they didn’t have this, the assumption was that they were quite nauseous by now.
By combining this with research into the animals’ brains, they were able to determine which neurons in the vestibular organ play an important role in the development of that feeling. Now that they know where the problem arises, the researchers hope to be able to develop better medicines.
You can read more about what exactly they found in the paper: Vestibular CCK signaling drives motion sickness–like behavior in mice
2023-10-22 12:03:49
#neurons #play #role #motion #sickness
