Air Force study tests electroCore vagus nerve stimulation for faster skill learning
electroCore reports results from a 50-person, sham-controlled US Air Force Research Laboratory fMRI study of noninvasive neck vagus nerve stimulation during image-analysis training.
electroCore announced on October 27 results from a US Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) study of 50 healthy airmen who received either active or sham noninvasive vagus nerve stimulation at the neck, using the company’s gammaCore Sapphire device, while training to spot vehicles in radar images over five days. Brain scans (fMRI) were taken during the study. The company says the active group learned faster on the second day and later showed lower activity in some task-related brain regions, which the investigators read as the task becoming less mentally demanding.
The work was presented at an IEEE defense photonics conference in September and has not yet been published in a peer-reviewed journal. The release itself calls the findings preliminary and notes the small sample and simulated task.
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