Journal of neural engineering最新文献

{"title":"Chronic subthreshold rTMS transiently disrupts learning but enhances memory and flexibility in healthy rats.","authors":"Wenxuan Jiang, Wooseong Choi, Christopher Hsu, Ignatius Lau, Mark McHugh, Chen Sun, Vivian Zijia Li, Mahlet Messay, Jenny Lin, Meihui Wu, Alex Lee, Zhouxiao Lu, Zihan Jin, Robert Isenhart, Darrin J Lee, Mohannad Tashli, Wesley Lohr, Ravi L Hadimani, Charles Y Liu, Dong Song","doi":"10.1088/1741-2552/aea44b","DOIUrl":"10.1088/1741-2552/aea44b","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p><i>Objective.</i>Repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) is an emerging non-invasive neuromodulation technique with therapeutic potential for the treatment of cognitive disorders. However, its effects on fundamental learning and memory processes in the healthy brain remain poorly understood. We have previously shown that subthreshold rTMS delivered with a miniaturized coil modulates neuronal activities and evoked potentials, but whether these physiological effects translate into cognitive changes remains unknown. Here, we systematically characterize the effects of subthreshold rTMS on learning and memory in healthy rats.<i>Approach.</i>We examined both chronic and acute effects of high-frequency (10 Hz) subthreshold rTMS on spatial learning, memory, and cognitive flexibility in healthy rats performing the Barnes maze task. The stimulation was delivered to the prefrontal cortex using the miniaturized coil, whose focal design operates at subthreshold intensity.<i>Main results.</i>We found that chronic rTMS transiently disrupted early spatial learning during the acquisition phase but did not impair overall task performance. In contrast, rTMS was associated with enhanced cognitive flexibility during the first reversal-learning phase and strengthened spatial memory of prior target locations during acquisition and reversal probe trials. These effects were not detected in the exploratory second reversal phase, and no acute cognitive effects were detected under alternating rTMS and sham stimulation. Together, these findings suggest complex, phase-specific effects of subthreshold rTMS on rodent cognition: transiently hindering early learning while promoting memory retention and flexibility.<i>Significance.</i>This work highlights both the opportunities and challenges of rTMS for cognitive modulation and provides a translational framework for optimizing stimulation protocols in neuropsychiatric and neurodegenerative disorders.</p>","PeriodicalId":94096,"journal":{"name":"Journal of neural engineering","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.8,"publicationDate":"2026-09-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148914779","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Axonal theta oscillations evoke bursting in target hippocampal subregions.","authors":"Samuel B Lassers, Gregory J Brewer","doi":"10.1088/1741-2552/aea2d7","DOIUrl":"10.1088/1741-2552/aea2d7","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p><i>Objective.</i>Local field potentials (LFPs) measured in the extracellular matrix of the brain are postulated to arise from the integration of synaptic ionic currents and spread by volume conduction. However, there is a lack of consensus on whether these spatiotemporal voltage gradients are just an epiphenomenon of spiking or if the LFPs play a functional role in information processing.<i>Approach.</i>To examine a potential functional role of LFPs in information processing, we developed a microfluidic device that allows neurons from the hippocampal formation to self-wire through microfluidic channels, effectively isolating the activity of single axons between subregions of the network.<i>Results.</i>We recorded spontaneous theta-band activity (4-10 Hz) in these axons whose power spectra were independent of simultaneous spiking activity. The highest theta amplitudes above noise were seen intermittently in a sparse set of axons from the CA3 into the CA1. Source neurons for the axonal theta were identified through cross correlation. Functionally, sparse axonal theta phase and amplitude correlated with target subregional spiking and more strongly with burst length.<i>Significance.</i>These results suggest that theta voltage oscillations in axons may contribute to activation of slow voltage-gated calcium channels to drive stronger synaptic release of transmitter to coordinate hippocampal activity between subregions. We propose that theta oscillations are controlled by specific ion channels distinct from those that generate spikes, a multiplex coding mechanism for inter-regional communication with implications for routing, executive control, electroencephalogram, disease states, and artificial neural networks.</p>","PeriodicalId":94096,"journal":{"name":"Journal of neural engineering","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.8,"publicationDate":"2026-09-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148893126","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"In silico framework for benchmarking optogenetic hearing restoration.","authors":"Lakshay Khurana, Petr Nejedly, Yixuan Zhang, Daniel J Jagger, Waldo Nogueira, Tobias Moser, Lukasz Jablonski","doi":"10.1088/1741-2552/ae9eec","DOIUrl":"10.1088/1741-2552/ae9eec","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p><i>Objective</i>. Cochlear implants (CI) partially restore hearing in profoundly hearing-impaired or deaf individuals by electrically stimulating the auditory nerve. A primary bottleneck in electrical CIs is the broad spread of electrical current from each electrode that limits the transfer of spectral information, which might be overcome by future spatially confined optogenetic stimulation. Here we established an in silico framework, FraSCO, to model sound encoding in the human cochlea by an optical CI (oCI) for testing the potential of optogenetic hearing restoration.<i>Approach</i>. The biophysical modelling framework combined an optical ray tracing model implementing a human cochlea implanted with a waveguide-based oCI with a single compartment model of optogenetically modified spiral ganglion neurons (SGNs). The input was an optogenetic sound coding strategy and the quality of the neural representation was evaluated based on comparison of neurograms evoked by optogenetic and electrical stimulation to the spectrogram of the sound applied. The model incorporated technologically feasible properties of the oCIs with 64 stimulation channels.<i>Main results</i>. The biophysical modelling framework successfully captured essential physiological features of optogenetic SGN stimulation with a minimal set of ion channel types expressed in the SGN soma. Working with a sample of 1000 SGNs distributed along the tonotopic axis to represent sound encoding, we found that improved spectral selectivity achieves comparable information encoding to electrical implants despite lower stimulation rates in current implementations of optogenetic stimulation. We also found that potential oCI users are predicted to be less impacted by noisy backgrounds.<i>Significance</i>. The established computational framework enables an in silico investigation and benchmarking of sound encoding in the cochlea by future oCI and state-of-the-art electrical CI. The results of the exemplary application indicate that optogenetic sound encoding has potential to improve speech understanding in noisy environments for CI users.</p>","PeriodicalId":94096,"journal":{"name":"Journal of neural engineering","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.8,"publicationDate":"2026-09-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148835914","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Selective activation of nerve fiber subpopulations with intrafascicular stimulation.","authors":"Arianna Ortega Sanabria, Louis Regnacq, Anil K Thota, Avery Holmes, Justin M Asbee, Sylvie Renauld, Florian Klobl, Yannick Bornat, Samantha Robinson, Laura McPherson, James J Abbas, Ranu Jung","doi":"10.1088/1741-2552/aea369","DOIUrl":"10.1088/1741-2552/aea369","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p><i>Objective.</i>Peripheral nerve stimulation (PNS) is most effective when specific nerve fiber subpopulations are activated, while minimizing off-target activation, which may cause undesirable side effects. This selectivity depends primarily on electrode design and charge delivery, but it remains unclear how selectivity depends on electrode location within a fascicle and whether intrafascicular field steering can shape recruitment of different nerve fibers. Our objective was to test the hypothesis that selective PNS could be achieved through electrode placement and intrafascicular electric field steering using longitudinal intrafascicular electrodes (LIFEs).<i>Approach.</i>LIFEs were implanted into the tibial fascicle of the sciatic nerve of 17 anesthetized adult rats. We tested whether electrodes positioned at different cross-sectional and longitudinal locations within the same fascicle, together with different electric field-steering approaches produced distinct activation patterns in the gastrocnemius lateralis muscle. Muscle responses were measured using high-density epimysial electromyography (HD-eEMG).<i>Main Results.</i>Electrodes placed at different locations within the same fascicle activated distinct muscle regions, demonstrating intrafascicular selectivity. Bipolar stimulation recruited nerve fibers differently than monopolar stimulation, showing that electric field steering can further shape the selective recruitment. In both configurations, increasing the stimulation amplitude produced a graded increase in muscle activation. Furthermore, our findings demonstrated that HD-eEMG is an effective tool for evaluating intrafascicular selectivity.<i>Significance.</i>These findings suggest that improving on-target selectivity may support next-generation bioelectronic therapies with better outcomes and fewer side effects, potentially enabling more precise, organ-specific neuromodulation. Using multiple intrafascicular electrodes may provide two complementary strategies for enhancing selectivity: strategic intrafascicular placement to access different fiber subpopulations and bipolar configurations to steer recruitment beyond what a single electrode can achieve.</p>","PeriodicalId":94096,"journal":{"name":"Journal of neural engineering","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.8,"publicationDate":"2026-09-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC13602116/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148908508","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Perceptual characteristics of scotomas modulate visual performance under simulated prosthetic vision.","authors":"Da Eun Kim, Minju Kim, Maesoon Im","doi":"10.1088/1741-2552/aea36b","DOIUrl":"10.1088/1741-2552/aea36b","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p><i>Objective.</i>Retinal prostheses aim to restore vision in patients blinded by photoreceptor degeneration, yet functional outcomes vary substantially across individuals. Scotomas-regions of reduced or absent visual sensitivity-are a defining feature of retinal degenerative diseases, but their perceptual status is often underappreciated in the design and evaluation of prosthetic vision. Here, we investigated how differences in scotoma perception influence perceptual visual task performance and perceptual representations.<i>Approach.</i>Psychophysical experiments were conducted using a virtual reality platform that simulated visual field deficits characteristic of retinal degeneration, including age-related macular degeneration. Two different scotoma conditions, perceptually filled-in (invisible) and solid black, were implemented in a head-mounted display environment developed in Unity 3D Game Engine. Participants performed visual tasks while behavioral measures, including accuracy, response time (RT), and eye-tracking metrics, were recorded and analyzed.<i>Main results</i>Despite identical visual inputs, task performance showed statistically significant differences depending on the perceptual characteristics (i.e. background-matching vs black) of the simulated scotoma. Critically, the spatial-frequency performance cost on RT was abolished selectively under the black-scotoma-with-phosphene condition (<i>χ</i>²(3) = 8.72,<i>p</i>= 0.033), whereas it remained significant under all invisible scotoma conditions, indicating that a perceptually distinct scotoma background enhances the detectability of phosphene signals. These differences were reflected corroborated by systematic divergences in gaze trajectory length and terminal fixation location across conditions.<i>Significance.</i>Our findings suggest that variability in scotoma perception constitutes an important, yet underexplored, factor contributing to inter-individual differences in the effectiveness of retinal prosthetic stimulation. Accounting for perceptual properties of scotomas may provide a framework for optimizing stimulation strategies and improving functional outcomes of future retinal prostheses.</p>","PeriodicalId":94096,"journal":{"name":"Journal of neural engineering","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.8,"publicationDate":"2026-09-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148908469","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Identifying shared and personalized brain functional connectivity subspace across neuropsychiatric disorders.","authors":"Shi Liu, Zhichao Wang, Yueming Wang, Yuxiao Yang","doi":"10.1088/1741-2552/aea44a","DOIUrl":"10.1088/1741-2552/aea44a","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p><i>Objective.</i>Neuropsychiatric disorders exhibit complex functional connectivity (FC) alterations, yet disentangling transdiagnostic mechanisms from disorder-specific network perturbations remains challenging due to clinical heterogeneity and multisite data confounds.<i>Approach.</i>We aggregated large-scale resting-state fMRI data from 1923 patients with major depressive disorder (MDD), autism spectrum disorder (ASD), or attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), and site-matched controls from the REST-meta-MDD, ABIDE, and ADHD-200 consortia. We applied the established common orthogonal basis extraction algorithm to decompose individual FC matrices into shared and personalized subspaces following site-level normalization.<i>Main results.</i>We validated that shared subspaces captured robust pathological signatures capable of distinguishing patients from independent healthy controls from the human connectome project. A hierarchical analysis of these shared subspaces revealed a transdiagnostic core defined by widespread default mode network decoupling alongside divergent subcortical connectivity patterns: hyper-connectivity in MDD but hypo-connectivity in ASD and ADHD. Despite these conserved commonalities, we demonstrated a functional dissociation in clinical utility: personalized subspaces exhibited significantly higher utility for precision characterization, achieving superior performance in predicting individual symptom severity and in discriminating between diagnostic groups (macro-<i>F</i>1: 77.6%)- tasks where shared features lacked sufficient specificity.<i>Significance.</i>These findings provide evidence consistent with a hierarchical neurobiological architecture wherein shared subspaces map conserved vulnerabilities, while personalized subspaces capture the heterogeneity underlying diagnostic distinctions and individual symptom expression. This work supports the value of modeling personalized neural signatures to advance precision psychiatry.</p>","PeriodicalId":94096,"journal":{"name":"Journal of neural engineering","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.8,"publicationDate":"2026-09-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148914776","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Diff-ADN: A diffusion-guided artifact denoising network with deterministic residual refinement for EEG.","authors":"Mudasir Jamil, Muhammad Zulkifal Aziz, Binwen Huang, Xiaojun Yu","doi":"10.1088/1741-2552/aeab36","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1088/1741-2552/aeab36","url":null,"abstract":"<p><strong>Objective: </strong>Physiological artifacts degrade electroencephalographic (EEG) recordings and can affect downstream brain-computer interface (BCI) analysis. This study develops a compact single-channel framework for ocular, muscular, cardiac, and mixed-artifact removal.&#xD;Approach: The Diffusion-Guided Artifact Denoising Network (Diff-ADN) employs a two-stage framework comprising severity-conditioned Stage-I reconstruction followed by diffusion-guided Stage-II residual refinement. During training, forward noising and velocity prediction supervise the Stage-II encoder, whereas inference requires only a single deterministic residual correction, without iterative reverse-diffusion sampling. The framework was evaluated under contamination levels ranging from -7 to +2 dB, using independently recorded artifact sources and motor-imagery decoding across four public EEG datasets.&#xD;Main results: Diff-ADN achieved mean Pearson correlations of 0.936, 0.839, 0.886, and 0.844 for EOG, EMG, ECG, and mixed EOG+EMG artifacts, respectively. When tested with independently recorded artifact sources, performance varied by artifact type: larger reductions were observed for EOG and EMG, while PTB and INCART ECG differed from the MIT-BIH reference by 0.026 and 0.014, respectively. Across the four motor-imagery datasets, ECG denoising recovered 4.88-5.59 percentage points (pp) in decoding accuracy compared with artifact-corrupted EEG. The largest recovery was 21.90 pp for PTB ECG artifacts on BCI IV-2a at -6 dB.&#xD;Significance: The proposed framework combines artifact-aware EEG reconstruction with efficient deterministic inference, processing 2-s segments in 12.52-17.08 ms on the tested CPU. Results across independent artifact sources and multiple motor-imagery datasets further show that improvements in waveform reconstruction do not necessarily translate into uniform recovery of BCI decoding accuracy.</p>","PeriodicalId":94096,"journal":{"name":"Journal of neural engineering","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.8,"publicationDate":"2026-09-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"149027234","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"IMU-weighted multimodal fusion for robust gesture recognition across arm positions.","authors":"Shang Shi, Jianjun Meng, Zongtian Yin, Weichao Guo, Xiangyang Zhu","doi":"10.1088/1741-2552/aea36c","DOIUrl":"10.1088/1741-2552/aea36c","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p><i>Objective</i>. Human-machine interfaces (HMIs) based on surface electromyography (sEMG) and A-mode ultrasound have achieved high gesture recognition accuracy; however, most studies have been conducted under a single static arm position. In practice, arm position variation degrades performance and limits translation beyond fixed-position laboratory settings. Although A-mode ultrasound can outperform sEMG at fixed positions, it is more sensitive to positional changes, an issue that has rarely been examined. This study addresses the cross-position sensitivity of ultrasound-based HMIs by fusing ultrasound data with sEMG and inertial measurement unit (IMU) data.<i>Approach</i>. We propose an IMU-weighted multimodal fusion framework. A feature fusion model and an sEMG single-modality model are trained in parallel. At the prediction stage, the arm position is estimated from the IMU, and the angular offset relative to the training positions is used to compute a continuous weight for combining the two models' posterior probabilities. Near training positions, greater weight is placed on the high-accuracy fusion model; as the offset grows, the contribution progressively shifts toward the robust sEMG model to avoid further degradation caused by A-mode ultrasound.<i>Main results</i>. Experiments were conducted across nine arm positions ranging from forearm elevation to lowering. With only two training positions, the proposed IMU-weighted method achieved an average accuracy of 85.88% across all nine positions, significantly outperforming other models.<i>Significance</i>. The method effectively exploits the high static accuracy of A-mode ultrasound and the cross-position stability of sEMG. With a low training burden, the proposed method improves cross-arm-position decoding accuracy, providing a practical route toward robust gesture recognition based on A-mode ultrasound across varying arm positions.</p>","PeriodicalId":94096,"journal":{"name":"Journal of neural engineering","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.8,"publicationDate":"2026-09-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148908510","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Continuous sliding pressure feedback enhances supernumerary robotic thumb proprioception over discrete vibrotactile feedback: behavioral and EEG evidence.","authors":"Haneen Alsuradi, Georgios Korres, Pi Ko, Joseph Hong, Mohamad Eid","doi":"10.1088/1741-2552/aea36f","DOIUrl":"10.1088/1741-2552/aea36f","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p><i>Objective</i>. Supernumerary robotic thumbs (SRTs) offer promising augmentation capabilities, yet their adoption remains limited by the lack of reliable proprioceptive awareness, which is critical for enabling intuitive control and cognitive integration. Vibrotactile (VF) and pressure feedback (PF) represent two widely used modalities for proprioception that differ fundamentally in their encoding of information: VF feedback is widely adopted due to its low cost and ease of wearability, but provides discrete, temporally patterned cues, whereas PF is expensive and bulky yet it delivers continuous, analog signals that more closely resemble natural proprioceptive input.<i>Approach</i>. This study compares discrete VF and continuous sliding PF for conveying SRT proprioceptive information in the absence of visual input, combining behavioral assessment with electroencephalography. A total of 42 participants were recruited and assigned to either a VF or PF group; they wore the SRT, received modality-specific sensory feedback during passive finger movements, and were asked to decode the start and end location of the finger's motion. Sensorimotor event-related desynchronization (ERD) in the alpha and beta bands and beta-band functional connectivity were analyzed to characterize cortical differences between modalities.<i>Main results</i>. Both modalities outperformed implicit feedback, with PF demonstrating superior accuracy compared to VF. VF elicited more sustained alpha-band ERD across both contralateral and ipsilateral sensorimotor cortices and sustained beta-band ERD in the ipsilateral sensorimotor cortex, suggesting prolonged cortical engagement and increased processing demand. PF elicited significantly higher beta-band small-worldness, indicating more efficient network-level integration of proprioceptive information.<i>Significance</i>. These findings demonstrate that continuous, analog feedback more effectively conveys proprioceptive information and sensorimotor integration than discrete, temporally encoded cues; informing the design of sensory augmentation systems that effectively integrate artificial limbs into the human body schema.</p>","PeriodicalId":94096,"journal":{"name":"Journal of neural engineering","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.8,"publicationDate":"2026-09-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148908465","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"In vitro modeling of the peripheral nerve: cell culture embodiments and outcomes.","authors":"Varadraj N Vernekar, Karla Rodriguez Pequeno, Rahul Rishal Sharma, Nguyen Kha Ai Vo, Romtin Golabi","doi":"10.1088/1741-2552/aeaa0e","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1088/1741-2552/aeaa0e","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Peripheral nerve injuries (PNI) are common and significantly affect the quality of life of patients. In vitro models of the peripheral nerve have emerged as a critical tool for studying peripheral nerve injury and regeneration. These existing models are cost-effective, reproducible, and offer controlled experimental conditions. However, they fail to adequately model the peripheral nerve because they lack the complex structural and functional interactions present in its in vivo environment. Advancements in cell culturing systems, biomaterials, and fabrication techniques are expected to bring in vitro models closer to physiological and clinical relevance, helping guide repair strategies for treating nerve injuries. In contrast to earlier reviews that focus on cell types or fabrication methods, this review takes a function-oriented approach, organizing in vitro models by the specific nerve processes or structures that they aim to replicate. This review begins with a discussion of the structure of the peripheral nerve, followed by a brief literature search methodology section, and a discussion on the advantages and challenges in the in vitro modeling of this tissue next. This is followed by a discussion focused on the creation of various in vitro models of the peripheral nerve used for the investigation of various nerve processes including a) axonal outgrowth, b) myelination, c) innervation, and d) vascularization along with illustrative figures and comparative analysis tables. Discussion includes also key aspects to be considered when designing in vitro models of the peripheral nerve such as selection of cell types, biomaterials, scaffold fabrication, nano-topography/fabrication, microfluidics/lab-on-a-chip, 3-D printing, deployment of growth factors and stem cells, and structural and functional characterization of the models. Finally, the clinical relevance of these models is discussed and the paper concludes with some impactful advances and future directions in the field.</p>","PeriodicalId":94096,"journal":{"name":"Journal of neural engineering","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.8,"publicationDate":"2026-09-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"149013505","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}