Identification of hypoglycemia-specific neural signals by decoding murine vagus nerve activity (opens in new tab)
Recently developed methods were used to isolate and decode specific neural signals acquired from the surface of the vagus nerve in BALB/c wild type mice to identify those that respond robustly to hypoglycemia. Neural signals in the vagus nerve respond significantly to insulin-induced hypoglycemia and correlate with dropping blood glucose levels. A decoding algorithm was able to reconstruct blood glucose levels with high accuracy (median error 18.6 mg/dl). Hyperglycemia did not induce robust vagus nerve responses, and deletion of TRPV1 nociceptors attenuated the hypoglycemia-dependent vagus nerve signals. These results provide insight to the sensory vagal signaling that encodes hypoglycemic states and suggest a method to measure blood glucose levels by decoding nerve signals.