Topic: vagus nerve stimulation

Vagus nerve stimulation (VNS) is a promising bioelectronic therapy to treat many drug-resistant pathologies. The activity of vagal unmyelinated fibers is an interesting feedback signal to control VNS, since linked to many pathological conditions of the immune, metabolic, cardiovascular, and respiratory systems. However, a widespread belief prescribes that unmyelinated activity is not observable in recordings from implanted electrodes. We tested this hypothesis using a biophysical model of recording setups from the vagus nerve. We considered the cases of a commercial cuff electrode and the tran

Emotions are conserved functional states influenced by both external stimuli and internal bodily signals. One key brain region implicated in the encoding of emotions and processing of bodily signals across species is the posterior insular cortex (pInsCtx). Recent work in mice has shown that optogenetically elevating heart-rate increases the activity of individual pInsCtx neurons as well as induces anxiety. Additionally, perturbing heart-to-brain communication using vagus nerve stimulation impedes fear extinction in a pInsCtx-dependent manner. However, we currently lack a mechanistic understa

The Locus coeruleus (LC), the main noradrenaline-producing nucleus in the brain, is affected in a wide range of neurological conditions such as Parkinson's disease and Alzheimer's disease. Notably, the locus coeruleus-noradrenergic (LC-NA) system can be a therapeutic target through Vagus Nerve Stimulation. Transcutaneous auricular Vagus Nerve Stimulation (taVNS), an alternative technique that stimulates the auricular branch of the vagus nerve, is being studied as it’s less invasive, yet the nuanced neurocircuitry linking this branch of the vagus and LC remains unelucidated, as does the optimal