Abstract
In 1899, Bayliss and Starling determined that the innervation of the intestines differs from that of other organs. They found that local neuronal networks are capable of generating reflex responses without the involvement of the central nervous system (Bayliss and Starling 1899). Once this unique feature of the enteric nervous system (ENS) was identified, it took roughly a century for enteric neurobiologists to accomplish the task of being able to identify the components of this “intrinsic neural mechanism”, including intrinsic primary afferent neuron, ascending and descending interneuron, and excitatory and inhibitory motor neurons (Bayliss and Starling 1899). Once this was possible, we and others began to investigate the intrinsic circuitry of the colon and ileum to systematically determine the cellular mechanisms that explain the changes in motility and secretion that occur in intestinal inflammation. We wanted to establish what changes occur in the enteric neural circuitry, where they occur, the mechanisms responsible for these changes, and how these changes in the neural circuitry impact intestinal function.
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Acknowledgments
This work has been supported by NIH-NIDDK grant DK62267 and by the Crohn’s and Colitis Foundation of Canada. KAS is a Killam Annual Professor and holds the Crohn’s and Colitis Foundation of Canada Chair in Inflammatory Bowel Disease Research.
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Mawe, G.M., Sharkey, K.A. (2016). The Intrinsic Reflex Circuitry of the Inflamed Colon. In: Brierley, S., Costa, M. (eds) The Enteric Nervous System. Advances in Experimental Medicine and Biology(), vol 891. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-27592-5_15
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-27592-5_15
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