ArticleScientific reports2024
Vagus nerve stimulation during training fails to improve learning in healthy rats.
Article in Scientific reports, 2024. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 8 papers.
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.
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Who cites it
8 citing papers in PubMed.
- Vagal nerve stimulation induces vascular oscillations and enhances long-term learning.iScience · 2026Article
- Non-invasive Vagal Nerve Stimulation as a Potential Treatment for Repetitive Blast Trauma.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026Article
- Neurotransmitter Systems in Alzheimer's Disease.Current issues in molecular biology · 2026Review
- Cognitive neurobehavior and synaptic plasticity after vagus nerve stimulation in female rats: Interaction between estrous cycle and neurostimulation.Bioelectronic medicine · 2026Article
- Transcutaneous vagus nerve stimulation reduces total striatal GABA+ content, increases DLPFC Glu content, and facilitates early-phase motor learning.Frontiers in human neuroscience · 2026Article
- Investigating the spatial limits of somatotopic and depth-dependent sensory discrimination stimuli in rats via intracortical microstimulation.Frontiers in neuroscience · 2025Article
- Speech paired vagus nerve stimulation restores neural sound processing in a rat model of autism.Frontiers in neuroscience · 2025Article
- Vagus nerve stimulation as a predictive coding modulator that enhances feedforward over feedback transmission.Frontiers in neural circuits · 2025Review
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
8 authors.
Funding
Abstract
Learning new skills requires neuroplasticity. Vagus nerve stimulation (VNS) during sensory and motor events can increase neuroplasticity in networks related to these events and might therefore serve to facilitate learning on sensory and motor tasks. We tested if VNS could broadly improve learning on a wide variety of tasks across different skill domains in healthy, female adult rats. VNS was paired with presentation of stimuli or on successful trials during training, strategies known to facilitate plasticity and improve recovery in models of neurological disorders. VNS failed to improve either rate of learning or performance for any of the tested tasks, which included skilled forelimb motor control, speech sound discrimination, and paired-associates learning. These results contrast recent findings from multiple labs which found VNS pairing during training produced learning enhancements across motor, auditory, and cognitive domains. We speculate that these contrasting results may be explained by key differences in task designs, training timelines and animal handling approaches, and that while VNS may be able to facilitate rapid and early learning processes in healthy subjects, it does not broadly enhance learning for difficult tasks.
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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.