Differential developmental blueprints of organ-intrinsic nervous systems.

The organ-intrinsic nervous system is a major interface between visceral organs and the brain, mediating important sensory and regulatory functions in the body-brain axis and serving as critical local processors for organ homeostasis. Molecularly, anatomically, and functionally, organ-intrinsic neurons are highly specialized for their host organs. However, the underlying mechanism that drives this specialization is largely unknown.

Cardiovascular Brain Circuits.

The cardiovascular system is hardwired to the brain via multilayered afferent and efferent polysynaptic axonal connections. Two major anatomically and functionally distinct though closely interacting subcircuits within the cardiovascular system have recently been defined: The artery-brain circuit and the heart-brain circuit. However, how the nervous system impacts cardiovascular disease progression remains poorly understood.

A multidimensional coding architecture of the vagal interoceptive system.

Interoception, the ability to timely and precisely sense changes inside the body, is critical for survival. Vagal sensory neurons (VSNs) form an important body-to-brain connection, navigating visceral organs along the rostral-caudal axis of the body and crossing the surface-lumen axis of organs into appropriate tissue layers. The brain can discriminate numerous body signals through VSNs, but the underlying coding strategy remains poorly understood.

Vagal sensory neurons and gut-brain signaling.

Our understanding of the gut system has been revolutionized over the past decade, in particular regarding its role in immune control and psychological regulation. The vagus nerve is a crucial link between gut and brain, transmitting diverse gut-derived signals, and has been implicated in many gastrointestinal, neurological, and immunological disorders. Using state-of-the-art technologies including single-cell genomic analysis, real-time neural activity recording, trans-synaptic tracing, and electron microscopy, novel physiological functions of vagal gut afferents have been uncovered, and new gut-to-brain pathways have been revealed.