InflammaSense

An article exploring the connection between the vagus nerve and physical and mental health, referencing the type of neural monitoring applied in the company's approaches.

Projects supported by U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, National Institutes of Health, Biological Advanced Research & Development Authority, as well as the Office of Science and Technology Policy and other sources of funding and advocacy have brought bioelectronic medicine to this point, Lerman acknowledges. “There is still a lot of work ahead of us,” he said, “but these next-generation systems have much potential for new avenues of individualized and adaptive treatment.”

A research team led by UC San Diego has, for the first time, shown that a wearable, non-invasive device can measure activity in human cervical nerves in clinical settings. The device records what the team calls Autonomic Neurography (ANG), neural activity from the human vagus and carotid sinus nerves as well as other autonomic nerves found in the skin and muscle of the neck. The vagus nerve is a “superhighway” of the involuntary nervous system, with tendrils extending from the base of the skull through the torso and abdomen to influence digestion, heart rate and the immune system. The vagus nerve plays a pivotal role in the body’s inflammatory response to injury or infection, and has been a focus for research into deadly conditions like sepsis, a leading cause of emergency room deaths affecting at least 1.7 million adults in the U.S. each year according to the National Institute of General Medical Sciences, and post-traumatic stress disorder, which affects about 3.5% of the population according to the National Institute of Mental Health.

A team of engineers and physicians at University of California San Diego has developed a device to non-invasively measure cervical nerve activity in humans, a new tool that they say could potentially inform and improve treatments for patients with sepsis, a life-threatening response to infection, and mental health conditions, such as post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). The device is described in the November 14, 2022 issue of Scientific Reports. “For the first time, we have identified cervical electroneurographic evidence of autonomic (fight or flight versus rest and digest) biotypes that are remarkably consistent across different challenges to the autonomic or involuntary nervous system,” said senior author Imanuel Lerman, MD, clinical professor of anesthesiology at UC San Diego School of Medicine, with additional appointments at the UC San Diego Qualcomm Institute, UC San Diego Jacobs School of Engineering and the VA Center of Excellence for Stress and Mental Health. The research builds upon the numerous and fundamental roles of the cervical vagus nerve, the upper portion of the vagus nerve that runs from the gut to the brain, delivering information on the status of surrounding inner organs, overseeing crucial bodily functions like immune response and digestion and playing a role in major psychiatric conditions, such as mood and anxiety disorders.