How does your brain recognize when it’s time to take a breath, when your blood pressure has fallen, or when your body is fighting an infection? The key lies in interoception, a little-known process through which the nervous system constantly monitors and interprets internal signals to keep essential body functions stable.

Researchers from Scripps Research and the Allen Institute have been awarded the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Director’s Transformative Research Award to develop the first comprehensive map, or atlas, of this internal sensory network.

The project will be led by Nobel Prize–winning neuroscientist Ardem Patapoutian, in collaboration with 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. Xin Jin, Associate Professor at Scripps Research, will serve as co-investigator and head the genomic and cell-type identification portion of the project. The initiative is supported by $14.2 million in NIH funding over the next five years.

“My team is honored that the NIH is supporting the kind of collaborative science needed to study such a complex system,” says Patapoutian, the Presidential Endowed Chair in Neurobiology at Scripps Research.

Decoding the Signals Within
Patapoutian, who shared the 2021 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for discovering cellular sensors of touch, will use the NIH award with his team to decode interoception.

“We hope our results will help other scientists ask new questions about how internal organs and the nervous system stay in sync,” adds Ye. Like Patapoutian, he’s also a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator.