Encoding of inflammatory mediators by vagal sensory neurons

项目摘要 神经系统和免疫系统相互沟通以对感染作出反应 并保持免疫平衡。过去二十年的研究表明，迷走神经 神经是神经免疫传递运动信号下行的关键途径 到身体，除了感觉信号上升到大脑。免疫介体的检测 在外周，如细胞因子，被认为是由迷走神经介导的，但尚不清楚感觉如何 神经元作出反应，并在原位表示这一信息。拟议研究的目标是 探索迷走感觉神经元如何编码和代表特定的信息 炎症介质。这一新的理解将为我们提供对 免疫信号的神经系统表示，这可以用来理解发生了什么 在涉及免疫失调的大量炎症性疾病中是错误的。 拥有一支经验丰富的科学家团队，他们是免疫神经调节方面的专家，我们 将使用基因编码的钙指示器来监测大群迷走神经感觉神经元 同时对特定的炎症介质做出反应。我们将使用采用的技术和工具 从神经科学中确定这些神经元是否使用种群编码信息 用于表示信息免疫相关信息的代码或时间代码。

Project Summary The nervous system and immune system communicate with each other to respond to infections and maintain immune homeostasis. Work over the last two decades has shown that the vagus nerve is a critical pathway for neuro-immune communication carrying motor signals descending to the body, in addition to sensory signals ascending to the brain. Detection of immune mediators in the periphery, such as cytokines, is thought to be vagally-mediated but it is unclear how sensory neurons respond and represent this information in situ. The goal of the proposed studies is to discover how vagal sensory neurons encode and represent information about specific inflammatory mediators. This new understanding will provide crucial mechanistic insights into the nervous system representation of immune signals, which can be used to understand what goes wrong in a host of inflammatory disorders that involve immune dysregulation. With a team of experienced scientists who are experts in the neural regulation of immunity, we will use genetically encoded calcium indicators to monitor large groups of vagal sensory neurons while they respond to specific inflammatory mediators. We will use techniques and tools adopted from neuroscience to determine whether these neurons encode information using a population code or a temporal code for representing information immune-relevant information.