A 10V Compliant 16-Channel Stimulator ASIC with sub-10nA Mismatch and Simultaneous ETI Sensing for Selective Vagus Nerve Stimulation

The vagus nerve (VN) is a key part of the parasympathetic nervous system connecting the brain to various organs. VN stimulation has been FDA-approved for treatment of drug-resistant epilepsy and depression and holds promise for chronic inflammation and arrythmia [1]. However, existing solutions either have poor spatial selectivity causing unwanted side effects or incur a high risk for nerve damage (Fig. 1). This work proposes non-penetrating high-density cuff electrodes driven by an ASIC that employs temporal interference stimulation (TIS) [2] to improve spatial selectivity (Fig. 1). In TIS, a pair of differential current stimulators generates two kHz-range semi-continuous sinusoidal currents with a small frequency offset (e.g. 10Hz). This creates an interference pattern within the tissue. Since neural cells are more receptive to low-frequency (LF), they would be entrained by the LF envelope. The stimulation intensity of the LF envelope can be steered to any location by selecting different electrode pairs and/or stimulation current amplitudes [2].