X nerve anatomy

Electrical stimulation of the vagus nerve (a.k.a. “nerve X”, or “X nerve”) is a promising therapy for a number of diseases where standard medication is insufficient or not effective. These are chronic heart failure, epilepsy, depression. However, the anatomy of the vagus nerve is poorly understood, and without knowing the functional organisation of this complex nerve its non-selective stimulation causes multiple side effects (Fitchett et al. 2021). In this project, we use a novel method of fast neural Electrical Impedance Tomography (EIT) to image autonomic functional neural activity. This method is further validated by neuroanatomical tracing and microCT (Thompson et al. 2023, Thompson et al. 2019).

Svetlana Mastitskaya
Svetlana Mastitskaya
British Heart Foundation Research Fellow

My research interests include neural mechanisms of cardioprotection, functional interactions between the brain, the heart and the gut, and how these interactions are coordinated by the vagus nerve matter.