Motion Adaptive Neural Interfaces for Brain-Body Communication - Project Summary and Abstract My overall career goal is to establish an independent research program that develops soft, adaptive bioelectronic technologies to study neural circuits that coordinate communication between the brain and body. Stable, high- fidelity neural recording from motion-involved organs such as the spinal cord, vagus nerve, gut, and heart is essential for understanding brain-body communication, yet this remains a core challenge in neuroengineering because of continuous tissue deformation during natural behavior. Even small physiological motions can disrupt coupling between conventional electrodes and tissue, leading to signal drift, inflammatory responses, and rapid loss of recording quality. Existing soft hydrogel-based electrodes better match neural tissue mechanics and hydration but are still limited by low channel count, weak adhesion on wet tissue, and instability during long-term motion, which hinders multisite electrophysiology in behaving animals. This F31 project will develop and validate a motion-adaptive hydrogel microelectrode platform that integrates scalable fabrication with robust wet-tissue adhesion to enable chronic, high-fidelity recordings from moving organs. In Aim 1, I will establish a cleanroom- free, brush-based microprinting workflow to fabricate multichannel hydrogel microelectrodes with tunable electrical and mechanical properties, and I will characterize their electrochemical performance, mechanical stability, and biocompatibility. In Aim 2, I will engineer adhesive hydrogel-tissue interfaces using carbodiimide- based surface chemistry and hydrogen bonding motifs, and I will quantify adhesion strength and interface toughness under physiologically relevant conditions in vitro and ex vivo. In Aim 3, I will validate these motion- adaptive, adhesive hydrogel microelectrodes in vivo in freely moving mice, performing acute and chronic recordings from the spinal cord, vagus nerve, and gastrointestinal tissues and integrating red-shifted ChRmine optogenetic stimulation to map how spinal perturbations propagate across cardiac, respiratory, and vagal pathways. This work will take place in the Neurobiological Interfaces Laboratory at Binghamton University under the primary mentorship of Professor Siyuan Rao, with additional guidance from my committee members and collaborators whose expertise spans soft materials, manufacturing, neural decoding, and spinal and autonomic circuit biology. Successful completion of this project will yield a practical, scalable soft neural interface for interrogating spinal and autonomic circuits during natural behavior and will provide rigorous interdisciplinary training that prepares me to develop next-generation bioelectronic systems for disorders of brain-body signaling as an independent investigator.
