ArticleCureus2025
The Effects of Craniofacial Muscle Contractions on the Formerly Vagus Nerve Somatosensory Evoked Potentials.
Article in Cureus, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Not yet cited in PubMed.
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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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7 authors.
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Abstract
objectiveHistorical studies reported that electrical stimulation applied over vagus nerve (VN) afferents from the tragus of the human ear-induced skull responses labeled as the vagus nerve somatosensory evoked potential (VSEP). Miscellaneous results acquired from healthy and diseased populations suggested that the origin of the VSEP might not correspond to brain neural activity, but rather to unwanted electromyographic oscillations. Our objective is to definitively demonstrate that scalp recordings labeled as the formerly VSEP (fVSEP) are the expression of muscle activity surrounding recording electrodes.
methodsUsing surface electrodes, we electrically stimulated the right ear tragus of five healthy male individuals (mean age: 44 ± 12 years) at 2, 4, 6, 8, and 10 mA, respectively. We recorded the VSEP from the skull of participants while they were relaxed and during controlled voluntary craniofacial muscle movements.
resultsIncreasing the stimulus intensity significantly paralleled the increase of the motoneuronal recruitment of the fVSEP during relaxed conditions (eyes open: p = 0.04; eyes closed: p = 0.03). Likewise, voluntary craniofacial muscle contractions significantly modified the duration (p < 0.01) and amplitude (p = 0.013) of the fVSEP.
conclusionsOur results indicate that the fVSEP is the graphical expression of depolarization and repolarization overflow of signals happening at a distance from the source, as well as the electromyographic expression of unwanted muscle oscillations exerted by craniofacial muscle events registered beyond the point of recording. Therefore, the fVSEP should no longer be considered a brain somatosensory evoked potential nor a measure of autonomic function.
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