Effects of Concomitant Stimulation of the GABAergic and Norepinephrine System on Inhibitory Control – A Study Using Transcutaneous Vagus Nerve Stimulation

Transcutaneous vagus nerve stimulation (tVNS) modulates flow experience

“…is a short, structured interview of about 15 min that screens for several psychiatric disorders and drug use, and it is often used in clinical and pharmacological research (Colzato et al 2012(Colzato et al , 2013. Following previous published protocols (Colzato et al 2017;Sellaro et al 2015;Steenbergen et al 2015;Beste et al 2016) participants took part in the experiment only if they met the following criteria: (1) age between 18 and 30 years; (2) no history of neurological or psychiatric disorders; (3) no history of substance abuse or dependence; (4) no history of brain surgery, tumors, or intracranial metal implantation; (5) no chronic or acute medications; (6) no pregnancy; (7) no susceptibility to seizures or migraine; (8) no pacemaker or other implanted devices. All participants never experienced tVNS before this study.…”

“…This device is composed by a stimulation unit and a dedicated ear electrode, which can be worn like an earphone. Following previous published protocols for optimal stimulation (Colzato et al 2017;Sellaro et al 2015;Steenbergen et al 2015;Beste et al 2016), the tVNS ® device was programmed to a stimulus intensity at 0.5 mA, delivered with a pulse width of 200-300 μs at 25 Hz. Stimulation alternated between on and off periods every 30 s. In the active condition, the stimulation electrodes were applied to the outer auditory canal.…”

Transcutaneous vagus nerve stimulation (tVNS) enhances conflict-triggered adjustment of cognitive control

“…Applying tVNS in order to stimulate LC activity has been shown to facilitate a wide range of affective and cognitive functions, including emotion recognition (Colzato, Sellaro, & Beste, 2017;Sellaro, de Gelder, Finisguerra, & Colzato, 2018), flow experience (Colzato, Wolters, & Peifer, 2018), divergent thinking (Colzato, Ritter, & Steenbergen, 2018), associative memory (Jacobs, Riphagen, Razat, Wiese, & Sack, 2015), attentional processing (Ventura-Bort et al, submitted), and various processes associated with cognitive control. For example, tVNS has been shown to increase post-error slowing (Sellaro et al, 2015) to speed responses in a stop-change paradigm without affecting the stopping response time (Steenbergen et al, 2015) and to reduce the commission of false alarms under challenging conditions in a response inhibition paradigm (Beste et al, 2016). Furthermore, activation of the LC by implanted VNS devices have been reported to enhance response-inhibition mechanisms in a stopsignal task (Schevernels et al, 2016).…”

Mixed evidence for transcutaneous vagal nerve stimulation to improve the extinction and retention of fear.

“…In line with this, recent studies have documented a range of effects of tVNS in humans, including an enhancement of associative memory and memory of emotional events (Jacobs, Riphagen, Razat, Wiese, & Sack, 2015). Critically, tVNS has been found to promote inhibitory processes, which might be compromised in anxiety patients, such as inhibitory control (Beste et al, 2016;Sellaro, Leusden, & Colzato, 2015) and -at the neural level -the functional connectivity between the right amygdala and the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (Liu et al, 2016). We have previously examined the effects of tVNS on fear extinction and retention.…”