Electrical vagus nerve stimulation (VNS) was approved by FDA for treatment of chronic recurrent depression in 2005. Recently, non-invasive, transcutaneous auricular vagus nerve stimulation （taVNS） has already been used for depression treatment. However, the neural mechanism remains unclear, and the relationship between stimulation parameters and neural response were also unknown. The present study aims to investigate the specific brain activation in depression patients after taVNS，compared with healthy controls.
Study Type
INTERVENTIONAL
Allocation
RANDOMIZED
Purpose
BASIC_SCIENCE
Masking
TRIPLE
Enrollment
60
All subjects receive electrical VNS stimulation at cymba conchae.
All subjects receive electrical stimulation at earlobe.
actual neural activation in brain
By using fMRI technology, the BOLD signal of brain is analyzed.
Time frame: 2 hours
Heart rate variability
Frequency domain methods is used to analyze the bands of frequency and then count the number of NN intervals that match each band. The bands are typically high frequency (HF) from 0.15 to 0.4 Hz, low frequency (LF) from 0.04 to 0.15 Hz, and the very low frequency (VLF) from 0.0033 to 0.04 Hz.
Time frame: 2 hours
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