Humanience

Autonomic Nervous System: The Other You That Controls You

In the NHK-BS program “Humanience: 4 Billion Years of Strategy,” our laboratory provided academic input and commentary. In the program, Dr Inoue also appears briefly and offers comments on findings obtained using planarians, from the perspective of how the autonomic nervous system emerged and evolved. Additionally, he also accompanied a field shoot involving collection at a river where wild planarians inhabit, and provided on-site expertise in the field.

Program Overview

The program we supported explores the still largely unknown mechanisms of the “autonomic nervous system,” which fundamentally underpins our mental and physical health. While introducing autonomic dysregulation that many people face in modern society, its associated psychological aspects, and the latest medical insights, the program also addresses the “origin of the autonomic nervous system.”

Program name: Humanence 4 Billion Years of Scheme Series: "Autonomic Nervous System" The Other You Who Controls You Premiere date: NHK-BS Thursday, February 5, 2026, 8:00 PM

The program highlights the remarkable precision of the “autonomic nervous system,” which continuously regulates vital functions independently of our conscious awareness. It broadly covers details of its functions revealed by recent research, correlations with contemporary concerns such as metabolism and midlife weight gain, and forward-looking approaches for how we might harness and actively modulate a system long regarded as “uncontrollable.”

Exploring the “Origin of the Autonomic Nervous System” Through Planarians

In the segment that examines how the autonomic nervous system is organized, I was responsible for an explanation from an evolutionary biology perspective using planarians.

Correlation between brain formation and autonomic nervous system :

Building on the fundamental behavior of animals efficiently eating food (feeding), I explained the process by which information becomes integrated, leading to the establishment of a central control system (the brain). In parallel, I presented a framework for how survival strategies—predation and escape (sympathetic) and digestion and absorption (parasympathetic)—came to be equipped as an “autonomic nervous system-like regulatory mechanism.”

Molecular-level contrasts:

The program also features our laboratory’s recent work on the planarian “pharynx.” It discusses octopamine, which corresponds to noradrenaline used in the human sympathetic nervous system, and acetylcholine, which is used in the parasympathetic nervous system. I explain how these two substances function in a contrasting manner within the fundamental feeding behavior that lies at the root of animal life.

Paper introduction :

These are the research results that formed the basis of the content explained in the program.

The pharyngeal nervous system orchestrates feeding behavior in planarians. Miyamoto, M., Hattori, M., Hosoda, K., Sawamoto, M., Motoishi, M., Hayashi, T., Inoue, T.* and Umesono, Y.* Science Advances 6: eaaz0882, 2020



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