The vagus nerve connects the brain to major organs throughout the body and plays an important role in many bodily functions. For people with movement disorders attending physical therapy, stimulation of the vagus nerve through a non-invasive technique, transcutaneous auricular vagus nerve stimulation (taVNS), has emerged as an additional therapeutic intervention. However, researchers have not assessed how taVNS interacts with the motor system during exercise, and thus whether it could be useful in therapeutic strategies for people with exercise performance problems. new from JNeurosciDane Donegan and Parius Vizkaitis from the Federal Institute of Technology Zurich led a study to advance our understanding of how using taVNS during human mobility affects different systems in the brain and body.
The researchers administered short bursts of taVNS to 36 healthy volunteers while a computer system asked participants to tap or not tap their fingers at random intervals. Compared to no stimulation, taVNS paired with movement increased activity in movement-related brain areas. Pointing out the specificity of the location of taVNS, stimulating different locations with taVNS did not increase activity in brain regions related to movement. The pupillary responses of the eyes during taVNS paired with movement suggested that neural signals were promoting a state of wakefulness. Other non-exercise-related anthropometric measurements were unchanged, suggesting that taVNS specifically targets arousal and locomotion. To confirm this specific behavioral role of taVNS in locomotion, the researchers removed the voluntary component of the paradigm and used a different method to activate motor pathways in the brains of 19 immobile participants while administering taVNS. This maneuver caused finger twitching without affecting other measurements.
The researchers say these findings reveal that when people use taVNS while moving, rather than producing broad, non-specific physiological effects, they may engage movement-specific brain and body systems. Vizkaitis highlights the therapeutic implications by posing several questions the research team would like to address. ”We want to know whether any of these systems that taVNS interacts with correlate with long-term outcomes. In other words, will this intervention lead to improvements in motor performance? And, hopefully, eventually we will be able to optimize its use by applying specific stimuli and tracking how the brain responds.. ”
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Reference magazines:
Perrin, C. others. (2026). Transcutaneous auricular vagus nerve stimulation during exercise selectively activates motor circuits without additional effects on the cortex or autonomic nerves. neuroscience journal. DOI: 10.1523/JNEUROSCI.2251-25.2026. https://www.jneurosci.org/content/early/2026/05/14/JNEUROSCI.2251-25.2026
