Transcutaneous Vagal Nerve Stimulation - a Potential Cognitive Therapy?
Sham device left and the real one on the right In older posts there was quite a lot written about the vagal nerve and a method of stimulating it, called vagal nerve stimulation (VNS). VNS is already used by many thousands of people with epilepsy; more recently a much milder kind of stimulation has been developed to improve learning after a stroke. This kind of therapy requires a 40 minute operation to attach the device inside the body. Even though it looks like VNS makes a dramatic improvement in rehabilitation following a stroke, I do not see children without epilepsy being fitted with internal VNS devices any time soon. Traditionally VNS requires making a connection directly to the main vagus nerve, however the vagus nerve has many branches leading to it. A German company Cerbomed has created a non-invasive, transcutaneous (through the skin) VNS device (tVNS) that stimulates the afferent auricular branch of the vagus nerve located in your ear. “This device has received CE a...