Hiccup cause resolved!

[Morbo]

Cecil’s column

OK, not actually “resolved” as in “100% proven,” but not dismissed as quackery either.
From this article:

In the latest issue of BioEssays (vol 25, p 182), a team led by Straus proposes that the brain circuitry controlling gill ventilation in these early ancestors has persisted into modern mammals.

There are many similarities between hiccuping and gill ventilation in animals like tadpoles, the researchers argue. Both are inhibited when the lungs are inflated, for example, and by high carbon dioxide levels in air or water. But why do we still hiccup 370 million years after our ancestors began hauling themselves onto land?

If the team is right, hiccupping before birth is just an early stage in the development of suckling, a little like learning to crawl before you can walk. Straus thinks the circuitry that controls the movements of the gills and glottis was conserved during evolution because it formed a building block for more complex motor patterns, such as suckling in mammals. “Hiccups may be the price to pay to keep this useful pattern generator,” he says.

He points out that the sequence of movements during suckling is very similar to hiccuping, with the glottis closing to prevent milk entering the lungs.

It is a plausible idea, says Allan Pack, an expert in respiratory neurobiology at the University of Pennsylvania. “But it’s going to be very tough to prove.”