Transcutaneous auricular vagus nerve stimulation enhances learning of novel letter-sound relationships in adults

Brain Stimulation

Tracy M. Centanni¹  Vishal J. Thakkar¹  Abby S. Engelhart¹  Helen Abadzi²  Navid Khodaparast³ 

[1] Department of Psychology, Texas Christian University, Fort Worth, TX, 76129, USA;Department of Psychology, University of Texas Arlington, Arlington, TX, 76019, USA;Nexeon MedSystems, Inc., Dallas, TX, 75231, USA;

关键词: Plasticity;    Reading;    Automaticity;    Decoding;    Intervention;    Fluency;   

DOI  :  

来源: DOAJ

【 摘 要 】

Background: Reading is a critical skill in modern society but is significantly more difficult to acquire during adulthood. Many adults are required to learn a new orthography after this window closes for personal or vocational reasons and while many programs and training methods exist for learning to read in adulthood, none result in native-like fluency. Implantable cervical vagus nerve stimulation is capable of driving neural plasticity but is invasive and not practical as a reading intervention. Objective: The goal of the current study was to evaluate whether non-invasive transcutaneous auricular vagus nerve stimulation (taVNS) is effective at enhancing novel orthography acquisition in young adults. Methods: We enrolled 37 typically developing participants and randomly assigned them to a computer control, device sham control, earlobe stimulation control, or experimental transcutaneous auricular stimulation (taVNS) group. Participants then learned novel letter-sound correspondences in Hebrew over five training lessons. Performance was assessed using three measures to evaluate various aspects of reading: Letter ID, Automaticity, and Decoding. Results: The taVNS group significantly outperformed the three control groups on both the Automaticity and Decoding tasks. There was no difference on the Letter ID task. Conclusions: These results demonstrate, for the first time, that taVNS is capable of improving aspects of reading acquisition in adults. These findings have potential implications for a wide range of cognitive tasks.

【 授权许可】

Unknown