Nearly 40 percent of people experience syncope, or fainting spells, at least once in their lives. These brief losses of consciousness, whether brought by pain, fear, heat, hyperventilation or other causes, account for a significant portion of hospital emergency room visits. Yet the exact root mechanisms at play when people “pass out” largely have remained a mystery.
Publishing a new report in Nature, University of California San Diego researchers, along with colleagues at The Scripps Research Institute and other institutions, have for the first time identified the genetic pathway between the heart and brain tied to fainting.
One of their unique approaches was to think of the heart as a sensory organ rather than the longstanding viewpoint that the brain sends out signals and the heart simply follows directions. School of Biological Sciences Assistant Professor Vineet Augustine, the paper’s senior author, applies a variety of approaches to better understand these neural connections between the heart and brain.