Dirty mind? Study suggests gut movement may flush excess material from our brains

"Using advanced imaging, Drew's team observed mice brains before and after the animals began walking. They realized that the brain actually moved just milliseconds before a mouse took a step - the brief moment when the animal's abdominal muscles contracted in preparation for movement."

"To test the observation, they strapped pressure sensors around the bellies of lightly anesthetized mice and observed the brain when slight pressure was applied only to the abdominal muscles. The same motion followed. Breathing or cardiac activity didn't trigger the same response."

"The connection, Drew and his colleagues determined, is the vertebral venous plexus, a network of veins that connects the abdomen to the spine in mice and humans alike. "It's like a hydraulic system. It really is very much like the jacks that push your car up, or something that an excavator might have," Drew said."

""Whenever you tense those muscles, which you do whenever you make a movement . . . that pushes blood into the spinal cord, it increases the pressure on your brain, and it moves your brain forward." The , which was published April 27 in Nature Neuroscience, answers a puzzling question about the mechanism controlling this long-observed cerebral movement."

Coordinated abdominal muscle contractions help stabilize the body during walking. New imaging shows the brain moves inside the fluid-filled skull cavity just milliseconds before a step. In mice, brain motion occurs in close timing with abdominal muscle tension rather than with breathing or cardiac activity. Pressure sensors applied to abdominal muscles reproduce the same brain movement. The mechanism is linked to the vertebral venous plexus, a vein network connecting the abdomen to the spine in mice and humans. Tensing abdominal muscles increases blood pressure in the spinal cord, which increases pressure around the brain and moves it forward. The findings connect body mechanics to brain dynamics and suggest implications for overall brain health.

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