Trial reportJournal of affective disorders2023
Effect of transcutaneous cervical vagus nerve stimulation on declarative and working memory in patients with Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD): A pilot study.
Trial report in Journal of affective disorders, 2023. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 10 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
10 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- Transcutaneous auricular vagus nerve stimulation may improve cognitive deficits in neuropsychiatric diseases-a systematic review.Frontiers in aging neuroscience · 2026Pooled it
- Transcutaneous Cervical Vagus Nerve Stimulation Improves Speech Comprehension in Noise: A Crossover, Placebo-Controlled Study.Neuromodulation : journal of the International Neuromodulation Society · 2025Trial
- A pilot study of brain correlates of long-term treatment with transcutaneous vagal nerve stimulation in posttraumatic stress disorder.Journal of affective disorders reports · 2026Article
- Without getting under your skin: non-invasive stimulation activates the vagus nerve.Frontiers in neuroscience · 2026Review
- Transcutaneous cervical vagus nerve stimulation improves speech comprehension in noise: A crossover, placebo-controlled study.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2025Article
- Article
- Accrued reductions in heart rate following transcutaneous vagal nerve stimulation in adults with posttraumatic stress disorder.Frontiers in neuroscience · 2025Article
- Acute and long-term effects of COVID-19 on brain and mental health: A narrative review.Brain, behavior, and immunity · 2025Review
- Neurotechnology for enhancing human operation of robotic and semi-autonomous systems.Frontiers in robotics and AI · 2025Review
- Vagus nerve stimulation: a physical therapy with promising potential for central nervous system disorders.Frontiers in neurology · 2024Review
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
10 authors.
Funding
Abstract
backgroundPosttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is associated with changes in multiple neurophysiological systems, including verbal declarative memory deficits. Vagus Nerve Stimulation (VNS) has been shown in preliminary studies to enhance function when paired with cognitive and motor tasks. The purpose of this study was to analyze the effect of transcutaneous cervical VNS (tcVNS) on attention, declarative and working memory in PTSD patients.
methodsFifteen PTSD patients were randomly assigned to active tcVNS (N = 8) or sham (N = 7) stimulation in a double-blinded fashion. Memory assessment tests including paragraph recall and N-back tests were performed to assess declarative and working memory function when paired with active/sham tcVNS once per month in a longitudinal study during which patients self-administered tcVNS/sham twice daily.
resultsActive tcVNS stimulation resulted in a significant improvement in paragraph recall performance following pairing with paragraph encoding for PTSD patients at two months (p < 0.05). It resulted in a 91 % increase in paragraph recall performance within group (p = 0.03), while sham tcVNS exhibited no such trend in performance improvement. In the N-back study, positive deviations in accuracy, precision and recall measures on different day visits (7,34,64,94) of patients with respect to day 1 revealed a pattern of better performance of the active tcVNS population compared to sham VNS which did not reach statistical significance. LIMITATIONS: Our sample size was small.
conclusionsThese preliminary results suggest that tcVNS improves attention, declarative and working memory, which may improve quality of life and productivity for patients with PTSD. Future studies are required to confirm these results.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.