A multi-campus research team has developed a novel device for non-invasively measuring cervical nerve activity in humans. The device, described in an article in Scientific Reports, has potential applications for supporting more personalized treatments for sepsis and mental health conditions such as post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
“With this newly developed device we (for the first time) identified cervical electroneurographic evidence of autonomic (fight or flight vs rest and digest) biotypes that were remarkably consistent across different challenges to the autonomic or involuntary nervous system,” said the study’s senior author Imanuel Lerman of UC San Diego’s Qualcomm Institute, School of Medicine, and Jacobs School of Engineering, as well as the VA Center of Excellence for Stress and Mental Health.
The device features a flexible array of electrodes that stretch from the lower front to the upper back of the neck, allowing researchers to capture electrical activity across different nerves. Other features include an integrated user interface for visualizing data in real-time, and a custom algorithm for grouping people according to their nervous systems’ response to stress.
A Safer, Less Invasive Way to Study the Nervous System
In the past, the more reliable ways of measuring nerve activity in the neck called for surgically implanted microelectrodes.
Lerman and Todd Coleman of UC San Diego’s Jacobs School and Stanford University set out to create a less risky and invasive means of monitoring this part of the nervous system by adapting existing technology Coleman had developed with co-author Jonas Kurniawan, now a postdoctoral researcher at Stanford. The new, flexible array can be worn up to a day and moves easily with the patient’s head and neck movements for longer, painless monitoring.
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