TY  - JOUR
A1  - Weymar, Mathias
A1  - Zähle, Tino
T1  - Editorial: New frontiers in noninvasive brain stimulation
BT  - cognitive, affective and neurobiological effects of transcutaneous vagus nerve stimulation
JF  - Frontiers in psychology / Frontiers Research Foundation
KW  - vagus nerve stimulation
KW  - tVNS
KW  - neuromodulation
KW  - cognition
KW  - affective
KW  - neurobiological
Y1  - 2021
U6  - https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.694723
SN  - 1664-1078
VL  - 12
PB  - Frontiers Research Foundation
CY  - Lausanne
ER  - 
TY  - JOUR
A1  - Ventura-Bort, Carlos
A1  - Wirkner, Janine
A1  - Wendt, Julia
A1  - Hamm, Alfons O.
A1  - Weymar, Mathias
T1  - Establishment of emotional memories is mediated by vagal nerve activation
BT  - evidence from noninvasive taVNS
JF  - The journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience
N2  - Emotional memories are better remembered than neutral ones, but the mechanisms leading to this memory bias are not well under-stood in humans yet. Based on animal research, it is suggested that the memory-enhancing effect of emotion is based on central nor-adrenergic release, which is triggered by afferent vagal nerve activation. To test the causal link between vagus nerve activation and emotional memory in humans, we applied continuous noninvasive transcutaneous auricular vagus nerve stimulation (taVNS) during exposure to emotional arousing and neutral scenes and tested subsequent, long-term recognition memory after 1 week. We found that taVNS, compared with sham, increased recollection-based memory performance for emotional, but not neutral, material. These findings were complemented by larger recollection-related brain potentials (parietal ERP Old/New effect) during retrieval of emotional scenes encoded under taVNS, compared with sham. Furthermore, brain potentials recorded during encoding also revealed that taVNS facilitated early attentional discrimination between emotional and neutral scenes. Extending animal research, our behavioral and neu-ral findings confirm a modulatory influence of the vagus nerve in emotional memory formation in humans.
KW  - emotion
KW  - ERPs
KW  - memory
KW  - Old
KW  - New effect
KW  - LPP
KW  - vagus nerve
KW  - tVNS
Y1  - 2021
U6  - https://doi.org/10.1523/JNEUROSCI.2329-20.2021
SN  - 1529-2401
VL  - 41
IS  - 36
SP  - 7636
EP  - 7648
PB  - Society for Neuroscience
CY  - Washington, DC
ER  - 
TY  - JOUR
A1  - D'Agostini, Martina
A1  - Burger, Andreas M.
A1  - Franssen, Mathijs
A1  - Claes, Nathalie
A1  - Weymar, Mathias
A1  - Leupoldt, Andreas von
A1  - Van Diest, Ilse
T1  - Effects of transcutaneous auricular vagus nerve stimulation on reversal learning, tonic pupil size, salivary alpha-amylase, and cortisol
JF  - Psychophysiology : journal of the Society for Psychophysiological Research
N2  - This study investigated whether transcutaneous auricular vagus nerve stimulation (taVNS) enhances reversal learning and augments noradrenergic biomarkers (i.e., pupil size, cortisol, and salivary alpha-amylase [sAA]). We also explored the effect of taVNS on respiratory rate and cardiac vagal activity (CVA). Seventy-one participants received stimulation of either the cymba concha (taVNS) or the earlobe (sham) of the left ear. After learning a series of cue-outcome associations, the stimulation was applied before and throughout a reversal phase in which cue-outcome associations were changed for some (reversal), but not for other (distractor) cues. Tonic pupil size, salivary cortisol, sAA, respiratory rate, and CVA were assessed at different time points. Contrary to our hypothesis, taVNS was not associated with an overall improvement in performance on the reversal task. Compared to sham, the taVNS group performed worse for distractor than reversal cues. taVNS did not increase tonic pupil size and sAA. Only post hoc analyses indicated that the cortisol decline was steeper in the sham compared to the taVNS group. Exploratory analyses showed that taVNS decreased respiratory rate but did not affect CVA. The weak and unexpected effects found in this study might relate to the lack of parameters optimization for taVNS and invite to further investigate the effect of taVNS on cortisol and respiratory rate.
KW  - cortisol
KW  - noradrenaline
KW  - pupillometry
KW  - reversal learning
KW  - salivary
KW  - alpha-amylase
KW  - transcutaneous auricular vagus nerve stimulation
Y1  - 2021
U6  - https://doi.org/10.1111/psyp.13885
SN  - 1469-8986
SN  - 1540-5958
VL  - 58
IS  - 10
PB  - Wiley-Blackwell
CY  - Malden, Mass. [u.a.]
ER  -