Clearin Vivid is supported by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation's program in public understanding,

which aims to enrich people's lives through a keener appreciation of our increasingly

scientific and technological world and to portray the complex humanity of scientists,

engineers, and mathematicians.

I'm Alan Olga and this is Clearin Vivid, conversations about connecting and communicating.

So in 2012, I had a device and experiment in which we took out a single neuron from the brain

of a mouse and we put them in a dish in the presence of a single one of these neuropods

cells from the gut of a mouse.

And it was so striking that not only the cells became, they recognized each other and they

got closer but they actually recapitulated this gut brain connection in the dish once

they are physically plugged to each other.

And the communication happens from the milliseconds to overtime and in fact I remember keeping

those cells together in that microscope for five days, I think four or five days.

And then I had to end the experiment because otherwise it was becoming too expensive,

paying for the microscope hours, right?

That's the agobahorchid and the remarkable experiment he remembers so vividly did much

to establish what he called the gut brain connection.

That our stomachs talk to our brains instantly and constantly giving a whole new meaning

to the idea of a gut feeling.

This is a fascinating bit of work that you do because it's something that we experience

every day but we never think about it about how when food gets into our stomach, how the

brain knows it's there and knows how much we should eat and what we should crave next

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