Cervical transcutaneous vagal nerve stimulation (ctVNS) improves human cognitive performance under sleep deprivation stress

Lindsey K Mcintire,John P Mcintire,Rebecca D Brown,R Andy Mckinley,Chuck Goodyear

doi:10.1038/s42003-021-02145-7

Abstract

Fatigue is a pervasive public health and safety issue. Common fatigue countermeasures include caffeine or other chemical stimulants. These can be effective in limited circumstances but other non-pharmacological fatigue countermeasures such as non-invasive electrical neuromodulation have shown promise. It is reasonable to suspect that other types of non-invasive neuromodulation may be similarly effective or perhaps even superior. The objective of this research was to evaluate the efficacy of cervical transcutaneous vagal nerve stimulation (ctVNS) to mitigate the negative effects of fatigue on cognition and mood. Two groups (active or sham stimulation) of twenty participants in each group completed 34 h of sustained wakefulness. The ctVNS group performed significantly better on arousal, multi-tasking, and reported significantly lower fatigue ratings compared to sham for the duration of the study. CtVNS could be a powerful fatigue countermeasure tool that is easy to administer, long-lasting, and has fewer side-effects compared to common pharmacological interventions.

Highlights

Fatigue is a pervasive public health and safety issue
Referred to as the locus coeruleus–norepinephrine (LC–NE) system, it is believed to play an important role in the regulation of attention, arousal, wakefulness, memory formation, and memory retention[3,5] many of the behaviors impacted by sleep deprivation
The two-sample t-tests revealed a significant difference between the throughput capacity of the cervical transcutaneous vagal nerve stimulation (ctVNS) group and the sham group at 0700 and at 1000 (Fig. 1, Supplementary Table 2, and Supplementary Data 1)

Summary

Introduction

Common fatigue countermeasures include caffeine or other chemical stimulants These can be effective in limited circumstances but other non-pharmacological fatigue countermeasures such as non-invasive electrical neuromodulation have shown promise. Finding a way to activate this system via nonpharmacological measures could provide a powerful fatigue countermeasure Research in this field over the last several years suggests at least one promising potential method: a noninvasive electrical neuromodulation device called transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS). This technology has been tested for enhancing cognition and human performance under various conditions of lengthy sleep deprivation as well as task-induced fatigue. Noninvasive stimulation of peripheral nerves that lie just under the surface of the skin and are highly afferent to the LC may offer an easier and more direct path of modulation via electrical stimulation

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Conclusion