Characterizing cortical responses evoked by electrical stimulation of the mouse infraorbital nerve

In recent years, the trigeminal nerve (CN V) has become a popular target for neuromodulation therapies to treat of a variety of diseases due to its access to neuromodulatory centers. Despite promising preclinical and clinical data, the mechanism of action of trigeminal nerve stimulation (TNS) remains in question. In this work, we describe the development and evaluation of a neural interface targeting the mouse trigeminal nerve with the goal of enabling future mechanistic research on TNS. We performed experiments designed to evaluate the ability of a peripheral nerve interface (i.e. cuff electrode) to stimulate the infraorbital branch of the trigeminal nerve. We found that both artificial and naturalistic stimulation of the trigeminal nerve elicited robust cortical responses in the somatosensory cortex that scaled with increases in stimulus amplitude. These results suggest that an infraorbital nerve interface is a suitable candidate for examining the neural mechanisms of TNS in the mouse.