{"slug": "dirty-mind-study-suggests-gut-movement-may-flush-excess-material-from-our-brains", "title": "Dirty mind? Study suggests gut movement may flush excess material from our brains", "summary": "New research published in Nature Neuroscience reveals that abdominal muscle contractions during movement push blood through a spinal vein network, causing the brain to shift inside the skull. Penn State neuroscientist Patrick Drew’s team used imaging and pressure sensors on mice to show that this hydraulic mechanism, triggered milliseconds before walking, may help flush waste proteins from the brain. The findings clarify a long-observed but unexplained cerebral motion, suggesting physical activity plays a direct role in brain health.", "body_md": "**Getting your**\n\n[Trinity Audio](//trinityaudio.ai)player ready...**By Corinne Purtill, Los Angeles Times**\n\nWith each step you take, coordinated contractions in your abdominal muscles help keep you stable and upright.\n\nNow, new research finds that those gentle changes in tension and pressure also affect your brain, and may play a role in the organ’s overall health.\n\nImaging in humans and other animal species has long shown that the brain gently moves inside the fluid-filled skull cavity, but it’s never been clear what, exactly, is propelling this motion, said neuroscientist Patrick Drew, a Penn State University professor and associate director of the Huck Institutes of the Life Sciences.\n\nUsing advanced imaging, Drew’s team observed mice brains before and after the animals began walking. They realized that the brain actually moved just milliseconds before a mouse took a step — the brief moment when the animal’s abdominal muscles contracted in preparation for movement.\n\nTo test the observation, they strapped pressure sensors around the bellies of lightly anesthetized mice and observed the brain when slight pressure was applied only to the abdominal muscles. The same motion followed. Breathing or cardiac activity didn’t trigger the same response.\n\nThe connection, Drew and his colleagues determined, is the vertebral venous plexus, a network of veins that connects the abdomen to the spine in mice and humans alike.\n\n“It’s like a hydraulic system. It really is very much like the jacks that push your car up, or something that an excavator might have,” Drew said. “Whenever you tense those muscles, which you do whenever you make a movement . . . that pushes blood into the spinal cord, it increases the pressure on your brain, and it moves your brain forward.”\n\nThe [paper](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41593-026-02279-z), which was published April 27 in Nature Neuroscience, answers a puzzling question about the mechanism controlling this long-observed cerebral movement.\n\nIt also puts forward hypotheses about why this belly-brain choreography exists.\n\nDrew and his team ran computer simulations of fluid’s motion in and around mouse brains. The kind of contraction generated by walking moves cerebrospinal fluid out of the brain, leading Drew to hypothesize that the mechanism plays an important role in flushing out excess proteins and other unnecessary material.\n\n“It’s more speculative, but using simulations, we can see that this sort of motion should drive fluid movement and could help clear waste in the brain,” Drew said.\n\nIn future research, Drew said, the team would like to explore whether the brain is detecting these mechanical signals, and how physical conditions like obesity affect the hydraulic relationship between the abdominal muscles and the brain.\n\nThese current findings clarify the relationship between the brain and physical movement, illuminating fundamental mechanics that can apply to other research, said Michael Goard, an associate professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara who studies sensory and spatial processing.\n\n“He did, what I think is a very thorough job figuring out what’s causing this movement in the case of locomotion and tying down the mechanical elements,” Goard said.\n\n*©2026 Los Angeles Times. 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Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.*", "url": "https://wpnews.pro/news/dirty-mind-study-suggests-gut-movement-may-flush-excess-material-from-our-brains", "canonical_source": "https://www.mercurynews.com/2026/05/27/gut-movement-flushing-excess-brain-material/", "published_at": "2026-05-27 14:10:21+00:00", "updated_at": "2026-05-27 15:57:36.527582+00:00", "lang": "en", "topics": ["neural-networks", "ai-research"], "entities": ["Corinne Purtill", "Patrick Drew", "Penn State University", "Huck Institutes of the Life Sciences", "Los Angeles Times"], "alternates": {"html": "https://wpnews.pro/news/dirty-mind-study-suggests-gut-movement-may-flush-excess-material-from-our-brains", "markdown": "https://wpnews.pro/news/dirty-mind-study-suggests-gut-movement-may-flush-excess-material-from-our-brains.md", "text": "https://wpnews.pro/news/dirty-mind-study-suggests-gut-movement-may-flush-excess-material-from-our-brains.txt", "jsonld": "https://wpnews.pro/news/dirty-mind-study-suggests-gut-movement-may-flush-excess-material-from-our-brains.jsonld"}}