Transdermal neuromodulation of noradrenergic activity suppresses psychophysiological and biochemical stress responses in humans.

William J Tyler,Rhonda S Silva,Sumon K Pal,Jonathan D Charlesworth,Alyssa M Boasso,Hailey M Mortimore,Daniel Z Wetmore,Linh Aven,Michelle A Marlin,Kirsten Aebersold

doi:10.1038/srep13865

William J Tyler, Rhonda S Silva + Show 8 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1038/srep13865

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Journal: Scientific reports	Publication Date: Sep 10, 2015
Citations: 44	License type: CC BY 4.0

Affiliation: Thync (United States)

Abstract

We engineered a transdermal neuromodulation approach that targets peripheral (cranial and spinal) nerves and utilizes their afferent pathways as signaling conduits to influence brain function. We investigated the effects of this transdermal electrical neurosignaling (TEN) method on sympathetic physiology under different experimental conditions. The TEN method involved delivering high-frequency pulsed electrical currents to ophthalmic and maxillary divisions of the right trigeminal nerve and cervical spinal nerve afferents. Under resting conditions, TEN significantly suppressed basal sympathetic tone compared to sham as indicated by functional infrared thermography of facial temperatures. In a different experiment, subjects treated with TEN reported significantly lower levels of tension and anxiety on the Profile of Mood States scale compared to sham. In a third experiment when subjects were experimentally stressed TEN produced a significant suppression of heart rate variability, galvanic skin conductance, and salivary α-amylase levels compared to sham. Collectively these observations demonstrate TEN can dampen basal sympathetic tone and attenuate sympathetic activity in response to acute stress induction. Our physiological and biochemical observations are consistent with the hypothesis that TEN modulates noradrenergic signaling to suppress sympathetic activity. We conclude that dampening sympathetic activity in such a manner represents a promising approach to managing daily stress.

Highlights

IntroductionWe tested the hypothesis that neuromodulation employing a high-frequency, pulse-modulated transdermal electrical neurosignaling (TEN) waveform targeting afferents (sensory and proprioceptive) of the right trigeminal nerve (V1/V2 distributions), temporal branch of the facial nerve, and cervical spinal nerves (Fig. 2a) can dampen basal sympathetic tone and alter the psychophysiological and biochemical responses to experimentally induced acute stress
Evidence accumulated in Experiment 1 demonstrating transdermal electrical neurosignaling (TEN) affected emotional thermoregulation by significantly increasing facial temperatures compared to sham is indicative of dampened basal sympathetic activity (Fig. 3b)
These observations are consistent with other reports investigating sympathetic skin responses (SSR) using functional infrared thermography that have shown increased sympathetic activity causes a decrease of facial temperatures while decreased sympathetic activity or relaxed mental states evoke increased thermal fluctuations of the face[28,29,30,31,32,33,34,35]

Summary

Introduction

We tested the hypothesis that neuromodulation employing a high-frequency, pulse-modulated transdermal electrical neurosignaling (TEN) waveform targeting afferents (sensory and proprioceptive) of the right trigeminal nerve (V1/V2 distributions), temporal branch of the facial nerve, and cervical spinal nerves (Fig. 2a) can dampen basal sympathetic tone and alter the psychophysiological and biochemical responses to experimentally induced acute stress. Our observations suggest this neurosignaling approach may be useful for alleviating the psychological, physiological, and biochemical responses to acute stress by exerting an effect on endogenous noradrenergic signaling

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