Journal: Frontiers in Human Neuroscience
Article Title: Transcutaneous vagus nerve stimulation reduces total striatal GABA+ content, increases DLPFC Glu content, and facilitates early-phase motor learning
doi: 10.3389/fnhum.2026.1731345
Figure Lengend Snippet: Experimental design. (a) Stimulation sites for transcutaneous vagus nerve stimulation (tVNS) and sham groups. The tVNS group was stimulated at the left cymba conchae (left panel), while the sham group was stimulated at the left earlobe (right panel). (b) Scheme for Experiment 1. Participants lie in an MRI scanner to measure the baseline GABA + concentration in striatum (STR), dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC), and sensorimotor cortex (SM). After that, they received either 30 min of tVNS or sham stimulation in a separate room. Following stimulation, GABA + concentration was remeasured in the same region. (c) Scheme for Experiment 2. A 2-min force-controlled task was performed before stimulation (Task 1), 10 min after stimulation onset (Task 2), 20 min after stimulation onset (Task 3), immediately after the end of the stimulation (Task 4), and 12 min after the end of the stimulation (Task 5). (d) Motor task protocol. Each trial consisted of two 60-s blocks and lasted 2 min. Participants were instructed to adjust the pinch force using their right thumb and index finger to quickly and accurately match a randomly moving target line.
Article Snippet: In both Experiments 1 and 2, the vagus nerve was stimulated noninvasively using a specialized tVNS device (Soterix Medical, Inc., USA).
Techniques: Concentration Assay