PDF(Pubmed)
Abstract：
Background: Evidence suggests that vagus nerve stimulation can modulate heart rate variability (HRV). However, there is a lack of mechanistic studies in healthy subjects assessing the effects of bilateral transcutaneous auricular vagus nerve stimulation (taVNS) on HRV. Our study aims to investigate how taVNS can influence the HRV response, including the influence of demographic variables in this response. Methods: Therefore, we conducted a randomized controlled study with 44 subjects, 22 allocated to active and 22 to sham taVNS. Results: Our results showed a significant difference between groups in the high-frequency (HF) metric. Active taVNS increased the HF metric significantly as compared to sham taVNS. Also, we found that age was a significant effect modifier of the relationship between taVNS and HF-HRV, as a larger increase in HF-HRV was seen in the older subjects. Importantly, there was a decrease in HF-HRV in the sham group. Conclusions: These findings suggest that younger subjects can adapt and maintain a constant level of HF-HRV regardless of the type of stimulation, but in the older subjects, only the active taVNS recipients were able to maintain and increase their HF-HRV. These results are important because they indicate that taVNS can enhance physiological regulation processes in response to external events.
摘要：
背景：证据表明迷走神经刺激可以调节心率变异性（HRV）。然而,在健康受试者中,缺乏评估双侧经皮耳迷走神经刺激(taVNS)对HRV影响的机制研究.我们的研究旨在调查taVNS如何影响HRV反应，包括人口统计学变量在这一反应中的影响。方法：因此，我们对44名受试者进行了一项随机对照研究，22分配给活性和22分配给假taVNS。结果：我们的结果显示，在高频（HF）度量方面，两组之间存在显着差异。与假taVNS相比,活性taVNS显著增加HF度量。此外，我们发现年龄是taVNS和HF-HRV之间关系的显著效应调节剂，因为在年龄较大的受试者中观察到HF-HRV的较大增加。重要的是,假手术组HF-HRV下降.结论：这些发现表明，无论刺激类型如何，年轻受试者都可以适应并维持恒定的HF-HRV水平。但是在较老的科目中，只有活跃的taVNS接受者能够维持和增加其HF-HRV。这些结果是重要的,因为它们表明taVNS可以增强响应于外部事件的生理调节过程。
