# A multidimensional coding architecture of the vagal interoceptive system

Article · Zhao Q, Yu CD, Wang R, Xu QJ, Dai Pra R, Zhang L, Chang RB

- Archive id: doi:10.1038/s41586-022-04515-5
- Published: 2022-03-16
- Venue: Nature
- DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-022-04515-5
- PMID: 35296859
- PMCID: PMC8967724
- Citations: 208
- Source URL: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-022-04515-5
- PDF: https://europepmc.org/articles/PMC8967724/pdf
- Provenance: europepmc

## Abstract

Interoception, the ability to timely and precisely sense changes inside the body, is critical for survival 1-4 . 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 5,6 . The brain can discriminate numerous body signals through VSNs, but the underlying coding strategy remains poorly understood. Here we show that VSNs code visceral organ, tissue layer and stimulus modality-three key features of an interoceptive signal-in different dimensions. Large-scale single-cell profiling of VSNs from seven major organs in mice using multiplexed projection barcodes reveals a 'visceral organ' dimension composed of differentially expressed gene modules that code organs along the body's rostral-caudal axis. We discover another 'tissue layer' dimension with gene modules that code the locations of VSN endings along the surface-lumen axis of organs. Using calcium-imaging-guided spatial transcriptomics, we show that VSNs are organized into functional units to sense similar stimuli across organs and tissue layers; this constitutes a third 'stimulus modality' dimension. The three independent feature-coding dimensions together specify many parallel VSN pathways in a combinatorial manner and facilitate the complex projection of VSNs in the brainstem. Our study highlights a multidimensional coding architecture of the mammalian vagal interoceptive system for effective signal communication.

_Abstract reproduced under CC-BY (article license as recorded by Europe PMC; abstract reproduced unmodified apart from markup removal)._

Topics: [Single-Cell & Spatial Omics](https://space-kitty.com/topics/single-cell-spatial)

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