Transcutaneous Auricular Vagus Nerve Stimulation Modulates the Prefrontal Cortex in Chronic Insomnia Patients: fMRI Study in the First Session

Transcutaneous auricular vagus nerve stimulation (taVNS) has been reported to be effective for chronic insomnia (CI). However, the appropriate population for taVNS to treat insomnia is unclear. Total twenty-four patients with CI and eighteen health controls (HC) were recruited. Rest-state functional...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Frontiers in neurology 2022-03, Vol.13, p.827749-827749
Main Authors: He, Jia-Kai, Jia, Bao-Hui, Wang, Yu, Li, Shao-Yuan, Zhao, Bin, Zhou, Zeng-Guang, Bi, Yan-Zhi, Wu, Mo-Zheng, Li, Liang, Zhang, Jin-Ling, Fang, Ji-Liang, Rong, Pei-Jing
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
biomarkers
chronic insomnia
functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI)
Neurology
neuromodulation
prefrontal cortex
transcutaneous auricular vagus nerve stimulation
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:Transcutaneous auricular vagus nerve stimulation (taVNS) has been reported to be effective for chronic insomnia (CI). However, the appropriate population for taVNS to treat insomnia is unclear. Total twenty-four patients with CI and eighteen health controls (HC) were recruited. Rest-state functional magnetic resonance imaging (Rs-fMRI) was performed before and after 30 min' taVNS at baseline. The activated and deactivated brain regions were revealed by different voxel-based analyses, then the seed-voxel functional connectivity analysis was calculated. In the CI group, 30 min of taVNS were applied twice daily for 4 weeks. Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (PSQI) and Flinders Fatigue Scale (FFS) were also assessed before and after 4 weeks of treatment in the CI group. The HC group did not receive any treatment. The correlations were estimated between the clinical scales' score and the brain changes. The scores of PSQI ( < 0.01) and FFS ( < 0.05) decreased after 4 weeks in the CI group. Compared to the HC group, the first taVNS session up-regulated left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (dlPFC) and decreased the functional connectivity (FCs) between dlPFC and bilateral medial prefrontal cortex in the CI group. The CI groups' baseline voxel wised fMRI value in the dlPFC were negatively correlated to the PSQI and the FFS score after 4 weeks treatment. It manifests that taVNS has a modulatory effect on the prefrontal cortex in patients with CI. The initial state of dlPFC may predict the efficacy for taVNS on CI.
ISSN:1664-2295
1664-2295
DOI:10.3389/fneur.2022.827749