What is the biological reason for those "butterflies in the stomach"?

Question

we all get some times?

what about those we get when we are attracted to someone

Answer 1

"Butterflies in the stomach" is a way of describing those nervous, fluttery feelings you might get before a test or an important game. An imaginative writer created the phrase to describe the feeling, and people have been using it ever since.

These tummy flutters are normal and happen to many people - even grown-ups. Some people believe having a few butterflies might even help you perform better by keeping you on your toes.

The reason for these common experiences, scientists say, is that the body has two brains - the familiar one encased in the skull and a lesser known but vitally important one found in the human gut Like Siamese twins, the two brains are interconnected ; when one gets upset, the other does, too.

The gut's brain, known as the enteric nervous system, is located in sheaths of tissue lining the oesophagus, stomach, small intestine and colon. Considered a single entity, it is a network of neurons, neurotransmitters and proteins that zap messages between neurons, support cells like those found m the brain proper and a complex circuitry that enables it to act independently, learn, remember and, as the saying goes, produce gut feelings.

The brain in the gut plays a major role in human happiness and misery. But few people know it exists, said Dr. Michael Gershon, a professor of anatomy and cell biology at Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center in New-York. For years, people who had ulcers, problems swallowing or chronic abdominal pain were told that their problems were imaginary, emotional, simply all in their heads. Dr. Gershon said. They were shuttled to psychiatrists for treatment.

Doctors were right in ascribing these problems to the brain. Dr. Gershon said, but they blamed the wrong one. Many gastro-intestmal disorders like colids and irritable bowel syndrome originate from problems within the gut's brain, he said. And the current wisdom is that most ulcers are caused by a bacterium, not by hidden anger at one's mother.

Symptoms stemming from the two brains get confused. Dr. Gershon said. "Just as tlie brain can upset the gut, the gut can also upset the brain" he said. "If you were chained to the toilet with cramps, you'd be upset too."

Details of how tlie enteric nervous system mirrors the central nervous system have been emerging in recent years, said Dr. Gershon, who is considered one of a new field of medicine called neurogastroenterology.

Nearly every substance that helps run and control the brain has turned up in the gut. Dr. Gershon said. Major neurotransmitters like serotonin, dopamine, glutamate, norepinephrine and nitric oxide are there. Two dozen small brain proteins, called neuropepddes, are in the gut, as are major cells of the immune system. Enkephalins, one class of the body's natural opiates, are in the gut And in a finding that stumps researchers, the gut is a rich source of benzodiazepines - the family of psychoacrive chemicals that includes such ever popular drugs as Valium and Xanax.

In evolutionary terms, it makes sense that the body has two brains, said Dr. David Wingate, a professor of gastrointestinal science at the University of London and a consultant at tlie Royal London Hospital. The first nervous systems were intubular animals that stuck to rocks and waited for food to pass by. Dr. Wingate said. The limbic system is often referred to as the "reptile brain".

As life evolved, animals needed a more complex brain for finding food and sex and so developed a central nervous system. But the gut's nervous system was too important to put inside the newborn head with long connections going down to the body. Dr. Wingate said. O-ffsprmg need to eat and digest food at birth. Therefore, nature seems to have preserved the enteric nervous system as independant circuit. Inside higher animals, it is only loosely connected to the central nervous system and can mostly function alone, without insructions from topside.

This is indeed the picture seen bydevelopmental biologists. A clump of tissue called the neural crest forms early in emblyogenesis. Dr. Gershon said. One section turns into the central nervous system. Another piece migrates to become the enteric nervous system. Only later arte the two nervous systems connected via a cable called the vagus nerve.

Untill relatively recently, people thought that the gut's muscles and sensory nerves were vyired directly to the brain and that the brain controlled the gut through two pathways that increased or decreased rates of activity. Dr. Wingate said. The gut was simply a tube with simples reflexes. Trouble is, no one bothered to count the nerve fibers in the gut. When they did, he said, they were surprised to find that the gut contains 100 million neurons - more that the spinal cord has. Yet the vagus nerve only sends a couple of thousand nerve fibers to the gut.

The brain sends signals to the gut by talking to a small number of "command neurons", which in turn send signals to gut intemeurons that cany messages up and down the pike. Dr. Gershon said. Both command neurons and interneurons are spread throughout two layers of gut tissue called the myenteric plexus and the subrnuscosal plexus. ("Solar plexus" is actually a boxing term that refers simply to nerves in the abdomen.) Command neurons control the pattern of activity in the gut. Dr. Gershon said. The vagus nerve only alters the volume by changing its rate of firing.

The plexuses also contain glial cells that nourish neurons, mast cells involved in immune responses, and a "blood brain barrier" that keeps harmful substances away from important neurons. Dr. Gershon said. They have sensors for sugar, protein, acidity and other chemical factors that might monitor the progress of digestion, determining how the gut mixes and propels its contents. "It's not a simple pathway", he said. "It uses complex integrated circuits not unlike those found in the brain."

The gut's brain and the head's brain act the same way when they are deprived of input from the outside world. Dr. Wingate said. During sleep, the head's brain produces 90-minute cycles of slow wave sleep punctuated by periods of rapid eye movement sleep in which dreams occur. During the night, when it has no food, the gut's brain produces 90-minute cycles of slow wave muscle contractions punctuated by short bursts of rapid muscle movements. Dr. Wingate said.

The two brains may influence each other while in this state. Dr. Wingate said. Patients with bowel problems have been shown to have abnormal REM sleep. This finding is not inconsistent with the folk wisdom that indigestion can produce nightmare.

Answer 2

Negative Feedback Responce to Stress caused by for example Examination threby trigerring the responce of hormones and neurotransmitters that gets you ready for a Fight or Flight responce threby tensing up the muscles in your stomach which results in the so called butterflies.

Answer 3

From Resident Evil 4.

Answer 4

It is triggered by the fight or flight reaction.... this is caused by adrenaline. When you get nervous or surprised you adrenal gland (located in your stomach area) sends out adrenaline which is a natural instinct for fighting. The adrenal gland is located right over your bladder which is the reason why, when you are nervous, you usually have to go to the bathroom.

Answer 5

Basically when you have fight or flight the blood needed for digestion usually goes elswhere resulting in the butterfly effect.

Answer 6

the butterflies can take the oxygen and nutrients from inside of stomach itself.

Answer 7

It's the movement of emotion, from within, when we are near someone of whom we would dare to say we actually have feelings for.....


your sister,
Ginger

Answer 8

swallowing a cocoon

Answer 9

nervous and excited, either one!

Answer 10

we get nervous