Keatch Charlotte, Lambert Elisabeth, Woods Will, Kameneva Tatiana
School of Science, Computing and Engineering Technologies, Swinburne University of Technology, Melbourne, Australia.
School of Health Sciences, Swinburne University of Technology, Melbourne, Australia.
J Neural Eng. 2022 Apr 13;19(2). doi: 10.1088/1741-2552/ac620c.
Transcutaneous vagus nerve stimulation (tVNS) is a form of non-invasive brain stimulation that delivers a sequence of electrical pulses to the auricular branch of the vagus nerve and is used increasingly in the treatment of a number of health conditions such as epilepsy and depression. Recent research has focused on the efficacy of tVNS to treat different medical conditions, but there is little conclusive evidence concerning the optimal stimulation parameters. There are relatively few studies that have combined tVNS with a neuroimaging modality, and none that have attempted simultaneous magnetoencephalography (MEG) and tVNS due to the presence of large stimulation artifacts produced by the electrical stimulation which are many orders of magnitude larger than underlying brain activity.The aim of this study is to investigate the utility of MEG to gain insight into the regions of the brain most strongly influenced by tVNS and how variation of the stimulation parameters can affect this response in healthy participants.We have successfully demonstrated that MEG can be used to measure brain response to tVNS. We have also shown that varying the stimulation frequency can lead to a difference in brain response, with the brain also responding in different anatomical regions depending on the frequency.The main contribution of this paper is to demonstrate the feasibility of simultaneous pulsed tVNS and MEG recording, allowing direct investigation of the changes in brain activity that result from different stimulation parameters. This may lead to the development of customised therapeutic approaches for the targeted treatment of different conditions.
经皮迷走神经刺激（tVNS）是一种非侵入性脑刺激形式，它向迷走神经的耳支发送一系列电脉冲，并且越来越多地用于治疗多种健康状况，如癫痫和抑郁症。最近的研究集中在tVNS治疗不同疾病的疗效上，但关于最佳刺激参数几乎没有确凿的证据。将tVNS与神经成像方式相结合的研究相对较少，并且由于电刺激产生的大刺激伪迹比潜在的脑活动大许多数量级，所以没有研究尝试同时进行脑磁图（MEG）和tVNS。本研究的目的是探讨MEG在深入了解受tVNS影响最强烈的脑区以及刺激参数的变化如何影响健康参与者的这种反应方面的效用。我们已经成功证明MEG可用于测量大脑对tVNS的反应。我们还表明，改变刺激频率会导致大脑反应的差异，大脑也会根据频率在不同的解剖区域产生反应。本文的主要贡献是证明了同时进行脉冲tVNS和MEG记录的可行性，从而能够直接研究不同刺激参数引起的脑活动变化。这可能会导致开发针对不同病症的定制治疗方法。
