Effect of Short-Term Transcutaneous Vagus Nerve Stimulation (tVNS) on Brain Processing of Food Cues: An Electrophysiological Study

Obst, Martina A.; Heldmann, Marcus; Alicart, Helena; Tittgemeyer, Marc; Münte, Thomas F.

doi:10.3389/fnhum.2020.00206

Cited by 13 publications

(10 citation statements)

References 72 publications

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“…On the other hand, we and others have reported no robust taVNS effects on average food ratings in healthy participants (Alicart et al, 2020;F.K. Müller et al, 2021;Obst et al, 2020). One potential explanation for these results may be the reported normalizing effect of taVNS on liking ratings, indicating that taVNS can either increase or decrease liking, depending on the average strength of hedonic responses, which varies considerably between people and even within MDD (Rizvi et al, 2016;Swiecicki et al, 2009;Treadway & Zald, 2011).…”

Section: Discussioncontrasting

confidence: 56%

“…However, three recent studies showed no evidence of taVNS-induced effects on liking and wanting ratings of food or on the amount of ingested food in healthy participants (Alicart et al, 2020;F.K. Müller et al, 2021;Obst et al, 2020). In contrast, in a small pilot study, Öztürk et al (2020) found taVNS-induced increases in food liking after the consumption of low-fat food.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Non-invasive vagus nerve stimulation normalizes food liking and improves liking ratings in depression

Koepp¹,

Klaus²,

Ferstl³

et al. 2021

Preprint

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Introduction: The vagus nerve plays a prominent role in the regulation of food reward and energy metabolism. However, previous studies using vagus nerve stimulation yielded conflicting results regarding changes in food reward in healthy participants and participants with major depressive disorder (MDD), for which vagal nerve stimulation is an effective treatment. Methods: We investigated the acute effects of right transcutaneous auricular vagus nerve stimulation (taVNS) on ratings of liking and wanting of food and non-food items in 63 participants, including 31 patients with MDD. To test for taVNS-induced changes and interactions with between-subject variables group (MDD vs. healthy controls) and questionnaire scores as well as within-subject variables, we performed linear mixed-effects analysis. In addition, we assessed whether individual taVNS-induced changes in food reward ratings were dependent on average ratings.Results: taVNS increased liking of food cues in participants with MDD (p= 0.023), but not in healthy participants (p= 0.657). Specifically, taVNS induced larger improvements in liking ratings with increasing scores of anhedonia (p= 0.029). Notably, across all participants, taVNS reduced the variance of food liking compared to sham, suggesting that taVNS normalizes extreme liking ratings towards moderate levels (p = 0.039).Discussion: Our results show that taVNS acutely ameliorates hedonic responses in MDD suggesting that it could provide an effective treatment of anhedonia. Since anhedonia is difficult to treat with conventional therapies, taVNS may provide a powerful adjuvant to rapidly improve motivational deficiencies.

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Section: Discussioncontrasting

confidence: 56%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Non-invasive vagus nerve stimulation normalizes food liking and improves liking ratings in depression

Koepp¹,

Klaus²,

Ferstl³

et al. 2021

Preprint

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“…Dietary fat plays an important role in the development and treatment of obesity, suggesting that tVNS is an interesting avenue for modulating food preferences to shift choices toward healthier, lower fat foods in the treatment of obesity for example. However, as VNS effects may be weight dependent (Pardo et al, 2007;Obst et al, 2020), future studies should examine liking and wanting to consume food in participants with overweight and obesity.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Recent work using tVNS modulation of responses to food stimuli in humans have shown mixed results. tVNS had no effect on electro-encephalogram responses to visual food stimuli relative to other objects, as well as no effect on food intake when tVNS was applied immediately prior to the test session (Obst et al, 2020). However, in an effort allocation task, concurrent tVNS increased participants' drive to obtain lesswanted prospective food rewards (Neuser et al, 2020).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 91%

tVNS Increases Liking of Orally Sampled Low-Fat Foods: A Pilot Study

Öztürk

Büning

Frangos

et al. 2020

Front. Hum. Neurosci.

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Recently a role for the vagus nerve in conditioning food preferences was established in rodents. In a prospective controlled clinical trial in humans, invasive vagus nerve stimulation shifted food choice toward lower fat content. Here we explored whether hedonic aspects of an orally sampled food stimulus can be modulated by non-invasive transcutaneous vagus nerve stimulation (tVNS) in humans. In healthy participants (n = 10, five women, 20–32 years old, no obesity) we tested liking and wanting ratings of food samples with varying fat or sugar content with or without tVNS in a sham-controlled within-participants design. To determine effects of tVNS on food intake, we also measured voluntary consumption of milkshake. Spontaneous eye blink rate was measured as a proxy for dopamine tone. Liking of low-fat, but not high-fat puddings, was higher for tVNS relative to sham stimulation. Other outcomes showed no differences. These findings support a role for the vagus nerve promoting post-ingestive reward signals. Our results suggest that tVNS may be used to increase liking of low-calorie foods, which may support healthier food choices.

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“…In the context of the current experiment it was asked whether tVNS effects on food intake were driven by stimulation-dependent alterations within the reward RSN (Wijngaarden et al, 2015 ; Zhang et al, 2015 ). Following up recent work of our group (Obst et al, 2020 ) we also tested for effects on the primary visual (VIS), salience (SAL), executive control (CE) and dorsal attentional (DA) networks.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Five weeks of intermittent transcutaneous vagus nerve stimulation shape neural networks: a machine learning approach

Obst

Al-Zubaidi

Heldmann

et al. 2021

Brain Imaging and Behavior

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Invasive and transcutaneous vagus nerve stimulation [(t)-VNS] have been used to treat epilepsy, depression and migraine and has also shown effects on metabolism and body weight. To what extent this treatment shapes neural networks and how such network changes might be related to treatment effects is currently unclear. Using a pre-post mixed study design, we applied either a tVNS or sham stimulation (5 h/week) in 34 overweight male participants in the context of a study designed to assess effects of tVNS on body weight and metabolic and cognitive parameters resting state (rs) fMRI was measured about 12 h after the last stimulation period. Support vector machine (SVM) classification was applied to fractional amplitude low-frequency fluctuations (fALFF) on established rs-networks. All classification results were controlled for random effects and overfitting. Finally, we calculated multiple regressions between the classification results and reported food craving. We found a classification accuracy (CA) of 79 % in a subset of four brainstem regions suggesting that tVNS leads to lasting changes in brain networks. Five of eight salience network regions yielded 76,5 % CA. Our study shows tVNS’ post-stimulation effects on fALFF in the salience rs-network. More detailed investigations of this effect and their relationship with food intake seem reasonable for future studies.

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Effect of Short-Term Transcutaneous Vagus Nerve Stimulation (tVNS) on Brain Processing of Food Cues: An Electrophysiological Study

Cited by 13 publications

References 72 publications

Non-invasive vagus nerve stimulation normalizes food liking and improves liking ratings in depression

Non-invasive vagus nerve stimulation normalizes food liking and improves liking ratings in depression

tVNS Increases Liking of Orally Sampled Low-Fat Foods: A Pilot Study

Five weeks of intermittent transcutaneous vagus nerve stimulation shape neural networks: a machine learning approach

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