Neural Engineering Center, Biomedical Engineering, Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, OH 44106, USA.
Biosensors (Basel). 2022 Feb 11;12(2):114. doi: 10.3390/bios12020114.
The vagus nerve is the largest autonomic nerve and a major target of stimulation therapies for a wide variety of chronic diseases. However, chronic recording from the vagus nerve has been limited, leading to significant gaps in our understanding of vagus nerve function and therapeutic mechanisms. In this study, we use a carbon nanotube yarn (CNTY) biosensor to chronically record from the vagus nerves of freely moving rats for over 40 continuous hours. Vagal activity was analyzed using a variety of techniques, such as spike sorting, spike-firing rates, and interspike intervals. Many spike-cluster-firing rates were found to correlate with food intake, and the neural-firing rates were used to classify eating and other behaviors. To our knowledge, this is the first chronic recording and decoding of activity in the vagus nerve of freely moving animals enabled by the axon-like properties of the CNTY biosensor in both size and flexibility and provides an important step forward in our ability to understand spontaneous vagus-nerve function.
迷走神经是最大的自主神经，也是各种慢性疾病刺激疗法的主要靶点。然而，迷走神经的慢性记录一直受到限制，导致我们对迷走神经功能和治疗机制的理解存在重大空白。在这项研究中，我们使用碳纳米管纱线（CNTY）生物传感器对自由活动的大鼠的迷走神经进行超过 40 小时的连续记录。使用各种技术（如尖峰分类、尖峰发射率和尖峰间隔）分析迷走神经活动。发现许多尖峰簇发射率与食物摄入相关，并且使用神经发射率对进食和其他行为进行分类。据我们所知，这是首次使用 CNTY 生物传感器的类似轴突的大小和柔韧性对自由活动动物的迷走神经活动进行慢性记录和解码，这是我们理解迷走神经功能的一个重要进展。
