ArticleBiological psychiatry2022
Neural Pathway for Gut Feelings: Vagal Interoceptive Feedback From the Gastrointestinal Tract Is a Critical Modulator of Anxiety-like Behavior.
Article in Biological psychiatry, 2022. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 29 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
29 citing papers in PubMed, 47 citations in OpenAlex.
- Not only gut feelings: pancreatic hormone, amylin, controls emotionality and sociability, in a sex divergent manner.Translational psychiatry · 2026Article
- Electroacupuncture alleviates depression and gastrointestinal dysfunction by rebalancing GABAergic activity in the central amygdala.World journal of psychiatry · 2026Article
- Mechanistic insights into the liver-brain axis during chronic liver disease.Nature reviews. Gastroenterology & hepatology · 2026Review
- Gut-brain communication: types of sensory nerves and mechanisms of activation.Nature reviews. Gastroenterology & hepatology · 2026Review
- Autonomic nervous system dysfunction in irritable bowel syndrome: pathophysiology and therapeutic implications.Frontiers in neuroscience · 2026Review
- Do stretch sensors expressed by aortic baroreceptors interact with circulating estradiol to mediate baroreflex sensitivity in hypertension?Frontiers in neuroscience · 2026Review
- Gut-to-brain interoceptive pathways in emotion-related behaviors.Frontiers in systems neuroscience · 2026Review
- Diet, gut microbiome, and cognition in neurodegeneration: a review and methodological framework.Frontiers in aging neuroscience · 2026Review
- The gut vagal sensory pathway drives postprandial sleep via activation of PVH-projecting GABAergic neurons in the NTS.Nature communications · 2025Article
- Control of feeding behavior by modified retrograde AAV to the gastrointestinal tract nerve afferents.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Gut-brain communication: Functional anatomy of vagal afferents.Current opinion in neurobiology · 2025Review
- Alternating magnetic field-responsive engineered probiotics for anxiety therapy via gut-brain axis modulation.Journal of nanobiotechnology · 2025Article
- Article
- Mechanosensation of the heart and gut elicits hypometabolism and vigilance in mice.Nature metabolism · 2025Article
- The Gut Microbiota-anxiety Connection: Evidence, Mechanisms, and Therapeutic Strategies.Current medicinal chemistry · 2025Review
- Gut microbiota regulates innate anxiety through neural activity of medial prefrontal cortex in male mice.Frontiers in neuroscience · 2025Article
- Ascending Vagal Sensory and Central Noradrenergic Pathways Modulate Retrieval of Passive Avoidance Memory in Male Rats.Journal of neuroscience research · 2024Article
- Article
- Gut-Brain Axis: Unveiling the Interplay Between Diabetes Mellitus and Alzheimer's Disease.Cureus · 2024Review
- A vagal influence on schizophrenia? A nationwide retrospective cohort of vagotomized individuals.medRxiv : the preprint server for health sciences · 2024Article
Corrections and comments
- Commented on by
Authors and funding
10 authors at 4 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
Abstract
backgroundAnxiety disorders are associated with an altered perception of the body's internal state. Therefore, understanding the neuronal basis of interoception can foster novel anxiety therapies. In rodents, the feeding status bidirectionally modulates anxiety-like behavior but how the sensing of gastrointestinal state affects anxiety remains unclear.
methodsWe combined chemogenetics, neuropharmacology, and behavioral approaches in male and female rats to test whether vagal afferents terminating in the gastrointestinal tract mediate feeding-induced tuning of anxiety. Using saporin-based lesions and transcriptomics, we investigated the chronic impact of this gut-brain circuit on anxiety-like behavior.
resultsBoth feeding and selective chemogenetic activation of gut-innervating vagal afferents increased anxiety-like behavior. Conversely, chemogenetic inhibition blocked the increase in anxiety-like behavior induced by feeding. Using a selective saporin-based lesion, we demonstrate that the loss of gut-innervating vagal afferent signaling chronically reduces anxiety-like behavior in male rats but not in female rats. We next identify a vagal circuit that connects the gut to the central nucleus of the amygdala, using anterograde transsynaptic tracing from the nodose ganglia. Lesion of this gut-brain vagal circuit modulated the central amygdala transcriptome in both sexes but selectively affected a network of GABA (gamma-aminobutyric acid)-related genes only in males, suggesting a potentiation of inhibitory control. Blocking GABAergic signaling in the central amygdala re-established normal anxiety levels in male rats.
conclusionsVagal sensory signals from the gastrointestinal tract are critical for baseline and feeding-induced tuning of anxiety via the central amygdala in rats. Our results suggest vagal gut-brain signaling as a target to normalize interoception in anxiety disorders.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.