Papers of the Week

Transcutaneous vagus nerve stimulation (tVNS) is an effective, non-invasive method of electrically stimulating the vagus nerve without surgical procedures and it is FDA-approved to treat cluster headache and migraine. One approach of tVNS is to stimulate the auricle branch of the vagus nerve (tVNS ) by sending a small electrical current through the tragus of the ear. Previous evidence indicates that heart rate (HR) is lowered, indices of heart rate variability (HRV) are increased, and muscle sympathetic nerve activity is decreased following 10-15 min of tVNS . However, these previous investigations did not control for respiration, which can influence autonomic activity. Thus, we tested the hypotheses that tVNS would lower heart rate and increase indices of HRV that reflect cardiac parasympathetic activity during paced breathing (PB).