Nature Communications
Division project · Active since 2017
Recording from the mouse vagus nerve, chronically and wirelessly, and decoding what its neurons report about inflammation and metabolism, toward bioelectronic devices that diagnose and treat from neural signals.
Overview
The vagus nerve is the body's sensory channel from the organs to the brain. Its sensory neurons in the nodose ganglia respond to circulating cytokines in a cytokine-specific way, and their population activity changes in an inflamed state; the same nerve carries signals specific to hypoglycemia. The program records these signals and builds decoders that read them in real time.
Doing so in a living animal over months required new tools: a chronic implant model for the mouse vagus nerve, a fully implantable wireless bidirectional neuromodulation system, impedance-matching algorithms that remove common-mode interference, and calcium imaging of the jugular-nodose ganglia to identify distinct populations of sensory neurons.
- Status
- Active since 2017
- Program
- Division project
- Publications
- 11, latest 2025
- Team
- 3 members
Lines of work
3 strands
01
Cytokine decoding
Vagal sensory neurons represent individual cytokines; inflammation increases the number of active neurons and reduces their responses.
Cold Spring Harbor Perspectives in MedicineProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences02
Metabolic decoding
Hypoglycemia-specific neural signals identified by decoding murine vagus nerve activity.
03
Chronic recording and methods
Implants, wireless systems, and signal-processing methods for months-long recording from the mouse vagus nerve.
International Journal of Neural SystemsJournal of Neural EngineeringBiosensors and BioelectronicsBrain StimulationJournal of Neuroscience MethodsInternational Conference on Solid-State Sensors, Actuators and Microsystems (TRANSDUCERS)
From the papers
Published figures
Figures reproduced from the papers behind this project.
Each panel keeps its original source and license.
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