How The Nervous System Controls The Immune System

Scientists set out to identify the specific connections between the nervous system and the immune system's organs.

By Patrick James Hibbert

2 Jan 2020

The autonomic nervous system is the involuntary part of the nervous system and is composed of sympathetic and parasympathetic regions. The sympathetic region controls the “fight or flight” mechanism and is activated when the body is stimulated.

Conversely, the parasympathetic region acts when the body is at rest and controls functions like digestion. And it’s nerve innervations are found in the parenchyma of all the classic immune organs. Those organs include lymph nodes, the tonsils, the thymus, the spleen, the appendix, bone marrow, gut-associated lymphatic tissue and it’s Peyer’s patch.

The way the immune system is controlled by the nervous system is not well-understood by the scientific community. In response to this, researchers in Beijing, China set out to understand how neural signals control the immune system.

They wanted to know which specific connections exist between the nervous system and the immune system’s organs. To find answers to their questions, they immunolabeled markers for neurons with synaptophysin and tyrosine hydroxylase and bred mice with fluorescence markers. Using confocal and light-sheet microscopy they examined the fluorescence bacteria-inoculated mice.

The neural architecture of the spleen.

They discovered interesting facts. Their immunolabeling revealed a panicle-shaped sympathetic architecture of the mouse’s spleen. They saw very few if any parasympathetic nerve innervations. Some immune cells, like T-lymphocytes, can produce acetylcholine. And neuronal, mostly sympathetic, fibers were found on the tissue surfaces of lymph nodes, Peyer’s patches, and their thymus.

When they muted the sympathetic architecture of the mice they discovered that the mice exhibited faster clearance of inoculated bacteria. Also observed was norepinephrine mediating the sympathetic signal. Just by treating the mice with norepinephrine slowed the clearance of bacteria from their system. Similarly, norepinephrine dampens the immune response of macrophages.

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