What is thirst? | Wireless

“There are only a few very important things for your body that there is a completely innate engine to get it if you fall short,” Knight said. “Oxygen, food, water and sodium.”

However, animals like us do not suffer from the desire of salt as a strong and dominant desire as we do with oxygen, food and water. The sensors indicate the levels of salt to the brain. In addition to OVLT and SFO, the heart sensors discover the expansion of atrium and ventricles. But there is no similar ping when we need it, and the way it gives up in the stomach of food or rough throat for water. Instead, the need to consume salt with taste and brain bonus paths is broken. “The taste of salt is considered dual.” “It tastes good in low doses; at high doses, she tastes disgust, such as drinking sea water.”

Imagine the desire to eat a large bag of potato chips. If the body needs salt, these chips will lead to an enjoyable dopamine to dump the brain. If the body does not need salt, dopamine drip disappears. “He learned to a large extent,” he said, he said Yuka OkaThe nerve scientist at the California Institute of Technology, which studies how the body maintains balance. “More dopamine means frequent behavior.”

Everyone is thirsty differently

Scientists who watch a river collecting data and then have an option about whether they should work on their findings. Likewise, just because the brain measures sodium levels in the blood does not mean that it should work on this information.

Take the lubricated ground squirrel from Elena Grachiva. GrachivaThe world of neurological physiology at Yale Medical College, studying these rodents, whose homeland is the herbal lands in North America, to understand how the areas of the brain specified in thirst control. She said that the thirteen lined ground squirrel is an ideal model for this purpose, because it swims for more than half of the year, without eating or drinking. “They are like the monks,” said Grachiva. “They do not go outside for eight months. They do not have water in their hole under the ground.” How do they not become thirsty?

Elena Gracheva (left) tracked how the brains of the lubricated sinbling (right) (right) suppress the response of thirst within several months of hibernation.

With permission from Grachiva Laboratory

CC-Dy 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons

It is not that the squirrel does not need water. They do. Their bodies scream for that. But according to Grachiva research, during hibernation their brain ignores the body signals.

In mammals, low blood water levels (which means a simultaneous increase in the concentration of salt, all equal objects) leads to two common operations. The pumping of the hormone of the hormone pumps the hormone, which tells the kidneys to keep water instead of leaving it as a pulp, and SFO launches thirst campaign to direct the animal to drink. However, while the ground squirrels precede, Population levels of jumpingBut the animal is still not drinking. “The Vasopresen circle was normal, but thirsty neurons were organized,” said Grachiva. “These two paths are not separate.” The body tries to keep the water it has, but it does not consume more.

The logic of the thirsty circles is very strong. “Even if you wake up in the middle of the hibernation, they will not drink,” Grachiva said.

The basic network taught by Gracheva in global swamps in mammals, even including humans. But this nervous logic itself does not lead to the same behaviors. Humans drink a cup of water when they are thirsty. Cats and rabbits often get water from the food they eat. Beauty can burn its water -to -water fatty stores (which produce carbon dioxide and water), but it also consumes gallons and storing them in its stomachs when they need it later. Sea foxes can drink ocean water and stool urine that is More salinity of the water praising it; They are the only marine mammals that actively do it.

How every animal manages that water and salt specialize in its ecosystem, lifestyle and selective pressures. The question “What does it mean to be thirsty?” He does not have one answer. All thirst in our own way.

The original story Recal it with permission from Quanta magazineAn independent editorial publication for Simonz Foundation Its mission is to enhance the general understanding of science by covering research developments and trends in mathematics, physical sciences and life.