The\u00a0vagus\u00a0nerve connects the brain to major organs throughout the body and plays important roles in many bodily functions. For people with mobility issues\u00a0participating\u00a0in physical therapy, stimulating the\u00a0vagus\u00a0nerve with a noninvasive technique-transcutaneous auricular\u00a0vagus\u00a0nerve stimulation, or\u00a0taVNS-is\u00a0emerging\u00a0as an\u00a0additional\u00a0treatment intervention. But researchers have not assessed how\u00a0taVNS\u00a0interacts with motor systems during movement, which could inform treatment strategies for those with mobility issues. New from\u00a0JNeurosci, Dane Donegan and Paulius Viskaitis at the Federal Institute of\u00a0Technology\u00a0Zurich led a study to advance understanding of how using\u00a0taVNS\u00a0as people move affects different systems in their brains and bodies.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The researchers delivered short bursts of\u00a0taVNS\u00a0to 36 healthy volunteers as a computer system directed participants to tap or not tap their fingers at random intervals. Compared to no stimulation, movement-paired\u00a0taVNS\u00a0increased activity in a movement-related brain area. Pointing to the specificity of\u00a0taVNS\u00a0location, stimulating a different location with\u00a0taVNS\u00a0did not increase activity in the movement-related brain area. Pupil responses in the eye during movement-paired\u00a0taVNS\u00a0suggested that the neural signals were promoting an arousal state. Other nonmovement-related bodily measures were\u00a0unchanged, suggesting\u00a0that\u00a0taVNS\u00a0was distinctly targeting arousal and movement. To confirm this specific behavioral role of\u00a0taVNS\u00a0in movement, the researchers removed the voluntary\u00a0component\u00a0of the paradigm and used a different method to activate motor pathways in the brains of 19 unmoving participants while delivering\u00a0taVNS. This\u00a0manipulation\u00a0triggered twitches in the finger without affecting other measures.\u00a0<\/p>\n
According to the researchers, these findings reveal that using\u00a0taVNS\u00a0while people\u00a0move may engage systems\u00a0in the brain and body that are specific to movement rather than producing broad, nonspecific physiological effects. Viskaitis emphasizes treatment implications by presenting some of the questions the research team wants to address: “We want to know if any of these systems that\u00a0taVNS\u00a0interacts with are correlated with\u00a0long-term outcomes. In other words, does this intervention lead to better motor performance? And hopefully we can eventually\u00a0optimize\u00a0[its use] by doing specific stimulations and tracking how the brain responds.”<\/p>\n
Source:<\/p>\n
Journal reference:<\/p>\n
Perrin, C., et al. (2026). Transcutaneous auricular vagus nerve stimulation during movement selectively activates motor circuitry without additional cortical or autonomic effects. Journal of Neuroscience. DOI: 10.1523\/JNEUROSCI.2251-25.2026.\u00a0https:\/\/www.jneurosci.org\/content\/early\/2026\/05\/14\/JNEUROSCI.2251-25.2026<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The\u00a0vagus\u00a0nerve connects the brain to major organs throughout the body and plays important roles in many bodily functions.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":59611,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[164,73093,163,85,46,14539,2161,44263,1360,3073],"class_list":["post-459522","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-health","tag-brain","tag-ear","tag-health","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-nerve","tag-neuroscience","tag-physical-therapy","tag-research","tag-therapy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/459522","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=459522"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/459522\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/59611"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=459522"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=459522"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=459522"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}