Summary: Synchronizing vagus nerve stimulation with normal brain patterns, such as the heartbeat and breathing, drastically improves its success. This “electric supplement” method uses ear-mounted electrodes to stimulate the vagus nerve, targeting serious problems like pain and inflammation.
The strongest results were obtained by stimulating the brain during the systole and inhalation phases, according to researchers. The findings suggest that tailoring muscle stimulation to personal biological rhythms could increase the effectiveness of this non-invasive treatment, particularly for those who have recently not responded.
Important Information:
- Timing Matters: Synchronizing excitement with manual and inhalation boosts performance.
- Personalized therapy: Improved treatment success may be based on adjusting stimulation to specific rhythms.
- Non-Invasive Ability: Offers a focused, gentle approach to serious condition management.
Origin: Vienna University of Technology
It doesn’t always have to get treatment. Some medical conditions, from severe pain and inflammation to neurological conditions, can also be treated with brain excitement, such as with the aid of wires that are attached to the neck and install the vagus nerve.
Often referred to as an “electric supplement,” this method is employed.
But, vagus nerve stimulation does not always function as intended. A study conducted by TU Wien ( Vienna ) in collaboration with the Vienna Private Clinic has demonstrated how this can be improved: Experiments have shown that the effect is very good when the electrical stimulation is synchronized with the body’s natural rhythms, such as the actual heartbeat and breathing.
The autonomic nervous system’s “electric supplement”
The vagus nerve is the longest nerve in our body, making up the body’s reserves and ensuring the exact control of the internal tissues and blood flow. It is also responsible for recovering and building up the heart’s own resources.
Little electrodes in the ears can be used to stimulate the vagus nerve, stimulate the brain, and affect various body functions because a branch of the vagus nerve even flows directly from the brain into the ear. As a result, little electrodes in the ear can be used to do this.
According to Prof. Eugenijus Kaniusas of the TU Wien Institute of Biomedical Electronics, “it turns out that this stimulation does not always deliver the desired outcomes.”
The nervous system is always unaffected by electrical stimulation. You could say that the brain doesn’t always pay attention. It appears as if the control center of the nervous system is occasionally open and then shut again, and this can change in less than a second.
Five individuals have now been subjected to an initial evaluation. To lower their heart rate, their vagus nerve was electrically activated. Previous research has demonstrated that heart rate could be a key factor in determining whether or not stimulation therapy is beneficial.
It was demonstrated that the temporal connection between the heartbeat and the stimulation is crucial. Almost no effect can be seen if the vagus nerve is stimulated at a rhythm that is not synchronized with the heartbeat.
However, if the stimulation signals are always used during the heart’s contraction ( during systole ), a significant effect can be observed, much more powerful than if stimulation is used during the relaxation phase of the heart, diastole.
Breathing is also crucial in this situation, as exhalation was significantly more effective during the inhalation phase than exhalation was.
Our findings indicate that synchronizing vagus nerve stimulation with heartbeat and breathing rhythm significantly increases effectiveness.
According to Eugenijus Kaniusas,” This could help improve the success of treatment for chronic illnesses, especially for those who have not previously responded to this therapy for reasons that are still undetermined.”
Larger clinical studies to follow
If nerve stimulation can be electronically modified to be tailored to the body’s individual rhythms at any given time, it should be possible to achieve significantly more successes than has been previously possible.
In order to better tailor the stimulation to individual needs, future studies should look at larger, clinically relevant patient groups and create even more precise algorithms.
According to Dr. Joszef Constantin Szeles from the Vienna Private Clinic,” This technology could be a potent and non-invasive way to modulate the autonomic nervous system in a targeted and gentle manner.”
About this news about neurotechnology and neuroscience
Author: Florian Aigner
Source: Vienna University of Technology
Contact: Florian Aigner – Vienna University of Technology
Image: The image is credited to Neuroscience News
Original Research: Open access.
Beat-to-beat deceleration dominates in systole-gated stimulation during inspiration, according to Joszef Constantin Szeles and colleagues ‘ pilot study. Frontiers in Physiology
Abstract
Personalized auricular vagus nerve stimulation: beat-to-beat deceleration dominates in systole-gated stimulation during inspiration – a pilot study
Neuromodulation is brought into focus as a non-pharmacological treatment with the vagus nerve serving as the target of modulation.
Auricular vagus nerve stimulation ( aVNS ) has been developed to treat chronic illnesses while reinforcing the sympathovagal balance and triggering parasympathetic anti-inflammatory pathways.
aVNS leads still to over and under-stimulation and is limited in therapeutic efficiency.
A potential avenue is the personalization of aVNS based on human body’s time-varying cardiorespiratory rhythms. In the pilot study, we propose personalized cardiac-gated aVNS and evaluate its effects on the instantaneous beat-to-beat intervals ( RR intervals ).
Since the efferent cardiac branch of the stimulated afferent vagus nerve governs the instantaneous RR, a modification of the RR is anticipated to reveal the aVNS efficiency. AVNS was administered to five healthy subjects.
Each subject underwent two 25-min sessions. The first session started with the non-gated open-loop aVNS, followed by the systole-gated closed-loop aVNS, then the non-gated, diastole-gated, and non-gated aVNS, each for 5min. In the second session, systole and diastole gated aVNS were interchanged.
RR changes are analyzed by comparing the lengthening of RR intervals with respect to the subsequent RR interval where aVNS occurred.
These RR changes are regarded as a result of the personalized stimulation onset, or the stimulation angle that begins with the R peak. On the cardiovagal modulation, is the role of the respiration phases considered.
The results show that the systole-gated aVNS tends to prolong and shorten RR when stimulated after and before the R peak, respectively. The longer the duration of the subsequent RR interval, the later in time the stimulation onset within the diastole-gated aVNS is.
The tendency of the RR prolongation increases as the stimulation angle increases, and the perceived RR interval increases as the stimulation delay increases.
The slope of this rise is larger for the systole-gated than diastole-gated aVNS. The personalized time-gated aVNS appears to have the highest slope values and thus the highest cardiovagal modulatory capacity when comparing individual respiration phases.
This pilot study demonstrates aVNS’s ability to control the heartbeat and, consequently, the parasympathetic activity that are attenuated in chronic diseases. The modulation is highest for the systole-gated aVNS during inspiration.
