Transcutaneous auricular vagus nerve stimulation improves working memory in temporal lobe epilepsy: A randomized double-blind study
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Published on: August 21, 2015
Liping Pan1, Jiajing Wang2,3, Wenjuan Wu4
1General Medicine Department, Tianjin Medical University General Hospital, Tianjin, China.
Aims:
This study investigated the impact of transcutaneous auricular vagus nerve stimulation (taVNS) on working memory (WM) in refractory temporal lobe epilepsy (rTLE) and the underlying mechanisms.
Methods:
In this randomized double-blind study, 28 rTLE patients were subjected to an active or sham taVNS (a/s-taVNS) protocol for 20 weeks (a-taVNS group, n = 19; s-ta VNS group, n = 9). Patients performed visual WM tasks during stimulation and neural oscillations were simultaneously recorded by 19-channel electroencephalography.
Results:
Compared with the baseline state, reaction time was significantly shorter after 20 weeks of taVNS in the a-taVNS group (p = 0.010), whereas no difference was observed in the s-taVNS group (p > 0.05). The power spectral density (PSD) of the theta frequency band in the Fz channel decreased significantly after a-taVNS during WM-encoding (p = 0.020), maintenance (p = 0.038), and retrieval (p = 0.039) phases, but not in the s-taVNS group (all p > 0.05).
Conclusion:
Neural oscillations during WM were altered by taVNS and WM performance was improved. Alterations in frontal midline theta oscillations may be a marker for the effect of taVNS on cognitive regulation.
