Within-meal gut feedback signaling

Abstract

During a meal, multiple gastrointestinal sites are stimulated by ingested nutrients and their digestion products, initiating local gastrointestinal actions and producing a variety of potential feedback signals that can contribute to meal termination. During ingestion, gastric emptying is rapid, allowing a significant portion of ingested nutrients to enter the intestine. Gastric and duodenal vagal afferent fibers increase their electrophysiological activity in relation to the mechanical presence of ingested nutrients. On reaching the duodenum, nutrients also activate vagal chemosensitive elements and stimulate the release of a variety of brain gut peptides including cholecystokinin (CCK). CCK also activates vagal afferent fibers directly and modifies the response properties of vagal mechanosensitive fibers to gastric and duodenal loads. Blocking or eliminating these feedback signals results in increased meal size demonstrating their role in meal termination.