ArticleFrontiers in neuroscience2026
Feasibility, safety, and preliminary outcomes of a school-based intervention combining paced-breathing HRV biofeedback and transcutaneous auricular vagus nerve stimulation in adolescents.
Article in Frontiers in neuroscience, 2026. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Not yet cited in PubMed.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
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
0 citing papers in PubMed.
No citing paper in PubMed yet.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
2 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
The vagus nerve is a major neurophysiological pathway linking the brain and body, and schools provide a practical setting for delivering stress-regulation programs. This uncontrolled pilot study assessed the feasibility, safety, acceptability, and preliminary outcomes of a school-based intervention combining paced-breathing heart rate variability (HRV) biofeedback with transcutaneous auricular vagus nerve stimulation (taVNS). Seventeen vocational education and training students aged 15-17 years enrolled in six weekly individual sessions of up to 30 min using emWave® biofeedback and Parasym™ taVNS. Feasibility was assessed through recruitment, six-session completion, acceptability, and adverse events. Exploratory outcomes included STAI-State anxiety, hair cortisol concentration (HCC), breathing self-regulation, and acute HRV indices. Recruitment was 50.0% (17/34), and 14 participants completed all sessions (82.4%). Among the 14 participants who completed all six sessions, 13 completed the written satisfaction item: 12 rated the program 5/5 and one rated it 4/5 (M = 4.92, SD = 0.28). One mild, transient stimulation-related adverse event occurred and resolved after pausing and resuming at a lower intensity. STAI-State scores decreased from pre- to post-intervention, whereas HCC increased. In nine participants with paired HRV data from Sessions 1 and/or 2, SDNN, RMSSD, lnHF, and lnLF were lower during combined paced breathing + taVNS than during spontaneous-breathing rest. Because the study was small, nonrandomized, uncontrolled, and the active components were always delivered together, these changes cannot be attributed to the intervention or to either component independently. The findings support cautious conclusions about deliverability and tolerability and provide information for a controlled trial, rather than evidence of efficacy.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
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.