Healthcare (Commonwealth Union) – When exploring the way, the brain detects when it is time to breathe, when blood pressure falls, or when the body is battling an infection has been heavily linked to interoception. This is a largely unexplored mechanism through which the nervous system constantly monitors and interprets signals from within the body to maintain essential physiological functions. A joint team from Scripps Research and the Allen Institute has now been awarded the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Director’s Transformative Research Award to develop the first comprehensive atlas of this internal sensory network.
The project will be led by Nobel Prize-winning neuroscientist Ardem Patapoutian, alongside Li Ye, the N. Paul Whittier Chair in Chemistry and Chemical Biology at Scripps Research, and Bosiljka Tasic, Director of Molecular Genetics at the Allen Institute. Scripps Research Associate Professor Xin Jin will serve as a co-investigator, heading the genomic and cell type mapping portion of the NIH-funded initiative. The team is set to receive $14.2 million in funding over five years.
Patapoutian, the Presidential Endowed Chair in Neurobiology at Scripps Research indicated that they are deeply honored that the NIH is supporting the collaborative research necessary to explore such a complex system. Patapoutian, co-recipient of the 2021 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for uncovering the cellular mechanisms of touch, will leverage the NIH award with his team to unravel the workings of interoception.
“We hope our results will help other scientists ask new questions about how internal organs and the nervous system stay in sync,” said Ye who is a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator as well.
Launched in 2009, the Transformative Research Award funds interdisciplinary initiatives that break traditional boundaries and explore novel scientific directions. This recognition is part of the NIH Common Fund’s High-Risk, High-Reward Research program, which encourages innovative concepts designed to address significant gaps in our knowledge of human health—projects that might face challenges securing support through conventional funding routes.
By differentiating traditional senses such as vision, hearing, or smell—which detect stimuli from the outside world through specialized organs—interoception functions via a network of neural pathways that track internal processes like blood circulation, digestion, and immune responses. Since these signals originate deep within the body and are often processed without conscious awareness, interoception has been called our “hidden sixth sense.”
Although crucial to our well-being, interoception has long been overlooked due to its intricate nature. Signals from internal organs spread extensively, often overlap, and are difficult to isolate or measure. The sensory neurons that transmit this information weave through organs—from the heart and lungs to the stomach and kidneys—without clearly defined anatomical boundaries.
With NIH support, the researchers plan to map how sensory neurons interface with a variety of internal organs, including the heart and digestive system.
The researcher’s objective is to bring about a mapping system that catalogs these neural circuits anatomically and at the molecular level as well.
When it comes to the anatomical portion, the researchers will label sensory neurons and apply whole-body imaging to identify their routes from the spinal cord to various organs. This forms an accurate 3D representation of their pathways and branching patterns. For the molecular section of the research, genetic profiling is set be utilized for characterizing the diverse types of sensory neurons, which shows, for example, the way neurons transmitting signals from the gut differ from those linked to the bladder or adipose tissue. When combined, these complementary datasets will lead to the initial standardized framework for charting the internal sensory network of the body.
With the greater examination of interoception, the scientists hope to discover fundamental principles of messaging between the body and brain, which could revel new therapeutic strategies. The functional issues in interoceptive pathways have been associated with a range of conditions, from autoimmune diseases, chronic pain, neurodegeneration, to hypertension.
