Article révisé par les pairs
Résumé : Background:Vagus nerve stimulation is a treatment for refractory epilepsy. The vagus nerve carries para-sympathetic information and innervates multiple organs. As seizures are commonly associated with autonomicmanifestations, we believe that biomarkers for diseases affecting autonomic functions such as epilepsy can befound in vagus nerve signals.New method:We present a method to record vagus nerve electroneurogram (VENG) and detect in the VENGsingle unit activity in anesthetized rats during Pentylenetetrazol induced seizures using a true tripolar cuffelectrode.Results:The VENG consisted of high amplitude bursts and lower amplitude bursts synchronous to respirationand heartbeat respectively. The average spikes exhibited a triphasic shape with duration below 1.5ms and rootmean square amplitude varied between 5.5 +/- 0.2 μV and 11.4 +/- 3.1 μV depending on the type of recording.An increase of the contact distance resulted in a signal amplitude increase. Application of Lidocaine led to a totaldisappearance of the recorded spontaneous spiking of the nerve.Comparisonwithexistingmethods:True tripolar cuff electrodes exhibited a better performance in terms of artefactrejection, stability and reproducibility of the signal compared to commonly used hook electrodes which is ofspecial interest in seizures where important motion and EMG artifacts are expected.Conclusion:We present a new method to record single unit activity of the vagus nerve during acute chemicallyinduced seizures in rats and verified the neural origin of the recorded signals. This recording method might be apowerful tool to develop seizure biomarkers based on VENG.

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