Get ready to be knocked out!
This is Sandra Tsing Loh with the Loh Down on Science.
Fainting, or syncope, affects FORTY percent of people in their lifetime. It involves sudden drops in blood flow to the brain leading to loss of consciousness. But, the science behind fainting has long been a mystery. Until now.
Enter Jonathan Lovelace and team from the University of California, San Diego.
They looked at the heart cells of mice, focusing on the neuropeptide Y receptor N-P-Y-2-R. These cells were previously shown to talk to the brain. Using glow-in-the-dark tags, they followed these cells to a brain region called the area postrema.
Researchers modified N-P-Y-2-R cells to turn on and off like a light. When turned on, the mice fainted! This resulted in decreased blood flow from the heart and decreased brain activity. Damaging the N-P-Y-2-R cells with a toxin prevented fainting, proving their involvement.
Knowing how fainting occurs could help us discover new ways to prevent it.
Who knew, there’s a science to SWOONING. *SIGH*
Reference: Lovelace, J. W., Ma, J., Yadav, S., Chhabria, K., Shen, H., Pang, Z., Qi, T., Sehgal, R., Zhang, Y., Bali, T., Vaissiere, T., Tan, S., Liu, Y., Rumbaugh, G., Ye, L., Kleinfeld, D., Stringer, C., & Augustine, V. (2023). Vagal sensory neurons mediate the Bezold-Jarisch reflex and induce syncope. Nature, 623(7986), 387–396. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-023-06680-7