Starting in the brain and extending to our organs, the vagus nerve helps communicate and maintain how the body functions, including heart rate, breathing and immune response. For the first time, researchers at The Feinstein Institutes for Medical Research are microscopically mapping more than 100,000 individual fibers that make up the vagus nerve to determine how they are anatomically connected and which bodily function it controls. Bioelectronic medicine scientists published their early mapping in the journal Brain Stimulation, along with a novel vagus nerve stimulator that can activate targeted fibers, opening up new avenues of vagus nerve stimulation (VNS) research.
The study, led by Stavros Zanos, MD, PhD, associate professor at the Feinstein Institutes’ Institute of Bioelectronic Medicine, deployed advanced methods for surgical dissection, imaging and microscopic anatomy to map how vagal fibers are organized inside the vagus nerve in animal models. The team found fibers that connect to the larynx, lung and heart lie in different parts of the nerve. They also discovered that sensory and motor fibers are in separate locations, which are close to the neck and later disappear as the nerve enters the chest cavity.
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“To advance the field of bioelectronic medicine and effectiveness of vagus nerve stimulation therapies, we must first understand what part of the nerve we are stimulating and what that does to the body,” said Dr. Zanos, senior author of the paper. “Through our early mapping and new electrical stimulation vagal nerve cuff, we hope to unlock the potential of VNS to treat more effectively organ-specific diseases.”
The team’s animal model VNS cuff wraps around the vagus nerve and has 10 contacts instead of the standard two contacts used today in clinical VNS devices. By electrically stimulating individual contacts around the nerve, the group showed that nerve fibers can be more selectively activated. For example, by stimulating the contact that lies away from nerve fibers to the larynx and closer to nerve fibers to the lung, they were able to affect lung function with a smaller impact on laryngeal function.
SOURCE: Businesswire