Learn about the “second brain” in your gut; what makes Jupiter’s atmosphere so hot; and why placebo buttons are useful. The 'second brain' in your gut might have evolved before the brain in your head by Cameron Duke Nield, D. (2021). The “Second Brain” in Your Gut Might Have Evolved Before The Brain in Your Head. ScienceAlert. https://www.sciencealert.com/we-have-a-brain-like-system-in-our-guts-and-it-may-have-evolved-before-brains-did?utm_source=pocket_mylist Rao, M., & Gershon, M. D. (2016). The bowel and beyond: the enteric nervous system in neurological disorders. Nature Reviews Gastroenterology & Hepatology, 13(9), 517–528. https://doi.org/10.1038/nrgastro.2016.107 Spencer, N. J., Travis, L., Wiklendt, L., Costa, M., Hibberd, T. J., Brookes, S. J., Dinning, P., Hu, H., Wattchow, D. A., & Sorensen, J. (2021). Long range synchronization within the enteric nervous system underlies propulsion along the large intestine in mice. Communications Biology, 4(1). https://doi.org/10.1038/s42003-021-02485-4 Hadhazy, A. (2010, February 12). Think Twice: How the Gut’s “Second Brain” Influences Mood and Well-Being. Scientific American. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/gut-second-brain/ Researchers have solved the decades-old mystery of Jupiter's hot atmosphere by Briana Brownell Hendricks, S. (2021, August 10). Solved: A 50-year mystery about Jupiter. Big Think; Big Think. https://bigthink.com/surprising-science/jupiter-heat-aurora Berman, R. (2021, July 14). Every 27 minutes, there’s an X-ray aurora on Jupiter. Here’s why. Big Think; Big Think. https://bigthink.com/surprising-science/jupiter-aurora Space scientists reveal secret behind Jupiter’s “energy crisis.” (2021, August 4). Phys.org. https://phys.org/news/2021-08-space-scientists-reveal-secret-jupiter.html O’Donoghue, J., Moore, L., Bhakyapaibul, T., Melin, H., Stallard, T., Connerney, J. E. P., & Tao, C. (2021). Global upper-atmospheric heating on Jupiter by the polar aurorae. Nature, 596(7870), 54–57. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-021-03706-w Yao, Z., Dunn, W. R., Woodfield, E. E., Clark, G., Mauk, B. H., Ebert, R. W., Grodent, D., Bonfond, B., Pan, D., Rae, I. J., Ni, B., Guo, R., Branduardi-Raymont, G., Wibisono, A. D., Rodriguez, P., Kotsiaros, S., Ness, J.-U., Allegrini, F., Kurth, W. S., & Gladstone, G. R. (2021). Revealing the source of Jupiter’s x-ray auroral flares. Science Advances, 7(28), eabf0851. https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.abf0851 Placebo buttons give us the illusion of control that we crave by Cameron Duke Baraniuk, C. (2015). Press me! The buttons that lie to you. Bbc.com. https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20150415-the-buttons-that-do-nothing Jenkins, H. M., & Ward, W. C. (1965). Judgment of contingency between responses and outcomes. Psychological Monographs: General and Applied, 79(1), 1–17. https://doi.org/10.1037/h0093874 Langer, E. J. (1975). The illusion of control. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 32(2), 311–328. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.32.2.311 Follow Curiosity Daily on your favorite podcast app to learn something new every day withCody Gough andAshley Hamer. Still curious? Get exclusive science shows, nature documentaries, and more real-life entertainment on discovery+! Go to https://discoveryplus.com/curiosity to start your 7-day free trial. discovery+ is currently only available for US subscribers.
Learn about the “second brain” in your gut; what makes Jupiter’s atmosphere so hot; and why placebo buttons are useful.
The 'second brain' in your gut might have evolved before the brain in your head by Cameron Duke
Researchers have solved the decades-old mystery of Jupiter's hot atmosphere by Briana Brownell
Placebo buttons give us the illusion of control that we crave by Cameron Duke
Follow Curiosity Daily on your favorite podcast app to learn something new every day with Cody Gough and Ashley Hamer. Still curious? Get exclusive science shows, nature documentaries, and more real-life entertainment on discovery+! Go to https://discoveryplus.com/curiosity to start your 7-day free trial. discovery+ is currently only available for US subscribers.
Find episode transcript here: https://curiosity-daily-4e53644e.simplecast.com/episodes/your-second-brain-jupiters-hot-atmosphere-placebo-buttons
CODY: Hi! You’re about to get smarter in just a few minutes with Curiosity Daily from curiosity-dot-com. I’m Cody Gough.
ASHLEY: And I’m Ashley Hamer. Today, you’ll learn about how the “second” brain in your gut may actually be your “first” one; how researchers solved the decades-old mystery of Jupiter’s hot atmosphere; and why placebo buttons are useful even though they don’t “do” anything.
CODY: Let’s satisfy some curiosity.
Your brain is keeping a secret from you: it’s not the only brain you’ve got. It turns out that there’s an independent system of neurons in your gut, and they work without any input from your brain. Even weirder, scientists think this “second brain” evolved before your so-called “first brain,” and new research is providing even more evidence that that’s the case.
This independent nervous system in your gut is called the enteric nervous system. It’s made up of motor neurons that control muscle contraction and sensory neurons that detect and respond to the chemicals in your gut. And unlike the nerve cells that keep your heart pumping or your liver functioning, these neurons operate without any input from your brain. There is communication between your gut and your brain, but about 90 percent of those signals are from the gut to the brain, not the other way around. Some research suggests that those signals could even be affecting your mood and behavior.
So it shouldn’t come as a surprise that a new study has found that motor neurons in the enteric nervous system behave completely differently from those in the regular ol’ central nervous system. The enteric nervous system forms a wide net of neurons that coordinate their activity to allow the gut to function properly.
Researchers from Flinders University used a brand-new technique that let them record muscle activity along the colon and compare it with changes in the colon’s diameter as it pushed its contents along its length. Scientists have never quite understood this process, so the fact that they were able to make these measurements was a big deal.
It turns out that thousands of neurons in the enteric nervous system join forces to coordinate contractions in the gastrointestinal tract. That’s very different from the way the central nervous system triggers other smooth muscles in organs responsible for moving fluids around, like blood vessels. After all, those muscles have nerves that connect to the larger system and are controlled by the brain.
Scientists believe that the enteric nervous system evolved along with the gastrointestinal tract. If that’s the case, then the rudimentary brain that controls the GI tract would have evolved long before the central nervous system. And this research is one more piece of evidence to suggest that’s true.
Forget second brain — your enteric nervous system is your first brain.
Jupiter is hotter than it should be. And for decades, scientists couldn’t figure out why. But a new study may have found the answer: high-energy auroras are heating up the planet. They’re giving off intense bursts of X-rays normally only seen near black holes and neutron stars.
As for why Jupiter shouldn’t be hot: well, it’s about five times farther from the sun than Earth. That long distance from the sun’s light and heat led scientists to assume Jupiter’s upper atmosphere should be about minus 100 degrees Fahrenheit or minus 73 degrees Celsius. But measurements consistently show a much higher temperature: 800 degrees Fahrenheit or 426 degrees Celsius.
Until now, we didn’t have a lot of measurements of Jupiter’s temperature, so it was impossible to pinpoint where all that heat was coming from. But recently, an international research team tried to find out by using telescope observations to create much more detailed temperature maps of the planet.
The new observations were helped along by a lucky accident. The observation window lined up with a significant solar storm, which caused strong auroras on Jupiter.
Just like on Earth, Jupiter’s aurora is caused by the interaction of charged particles from the sun and its electromagnetic field. And Jupiter has a super strong electromagnetic field. It’s about 20,000 times stronger than Earth’s and extends almost to the orbit of Saturn.
That means the power of Jupiter’s auroras are huge too. Every 27 minutes, an auroral event occurs at the North and South pole that is so energetic, it could power our entire civilization!
Jupiter’s auroras are powerful, but scientists wondered: are they powerful enough to heat up the entire planet? Or is the aurora’s heat confined to the poles?
To find out, the research team used data from the Keck Observatory in Hawaii to create the most detailed map of the planet’s upper atmosphere yet. It showed that the auroras did indeed cause the temperature to fluctuate across the entire planet, from the poles all the way to the equator. This led the research team to conclude that the redistribution of the aurora’s energy was the main thing heating Jupiter’s upper atmosphere.
So although other heating mechanisms might be playing a part, we now know that the aurora is the main reason Jupiter is so darn hot.
ASHLEY:
What do a lot of crosswalk buttons, elevator door-close buttons, and office thermostats have in common? I’ll tell you: They probably don’t connect to anything.
You might need to push a crosswalk button in a low-traffic area to trigger the light to change, but in dense urban areas, those buttons are often just props. Seriously, cities control traffic by carefully timing traffic lights — they aren’t about to let a few pedestrians throw those timings off. Which kinda makes you wonder why they’re there in the first place.
Well, these buttons are sometimes called “placebo buttons.” And they’re incredibly common in public spaces. But just because they might not serve the purpose they advertise doesn’t mean they don’t serve a purpose.
That is, they give you the illusion of control. That’s a term coined by Harvard psychologist Ellen Langer in the 1970s. In one of her experiments, she had participants play a lottery. Some participants were able to choose their tickets, and some were simply given a ticket from the pile. A few days later, each person was asked whether they’d sell their ticket to someone else who wanted to get in on the lottery. Even though the type of ticket had no effect whatsoever on their chance of winning, those who had chosen their tickets were much less willing to part with them than those who hadn’t. They seemed to believe that their choice gave them more control over the outcome.
But instead of framing this as an irrational delusion, Langer described the effect as a positive thing. It’s good to feel like you’re in control, even if you’re not. She argues that doing something might be better than doing nothing, even if that something is mechanically meaningless.
And there are other benefits, too. For example, even if pressing the crosswalk button does nothing, that simple act keeps your attention on the crosswalk signals because it reminds you that you will get your turn to cross. The thermostat in an office building might not control anything, but it gives people in the office a sense of control over their surroundings — and might even make them feel cooler or warmer anyway, regardless of the temperature in the room.
But the deception doesn’t really matter. Multiple studies have found that even when experimenters have been honest with the subjects and told them that they had no control over the outcome of a particular exercise, participants still report feeling some level of control.
In this way, placebo buttons might be like a lucky rabbit’s foot. You know it doesn’t do anything, but you keep using it because it makes you feel better.
Let’s recap today’s takeaways
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ASHLEY: Today’s writers were Cameron Duke and Briana Brownell.
CODY: Our managing editor is Ashley Hamer.
ASHLEY: Our producer and audio editor is Cody Gough.
CODY: [AD LIB SOMETHING FUNNY] Join us again tomorrow to learn something new in just a few minutes.
ASHLEY: And until then, stay curious!