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. Author manuscript; available in PMC: 2022 Oct 24.
Published in final edited form as: Brain Stimul. 2022 Aug 27;15(5):1206–1214. doi: 10.1016/j.brs.2022.08.017

Fig. 1.

Fig. 1.

Background and research question. (A) Previous studies of transcutaneous cervical vagus nerve stimulation (tcVNS) found modulated brain activity in regions associated with opioid craving and/or withdrawal. Heart rate reductions during tcVNS were also observed. The hypothesized mechanism of action is shown, where tcVNS is believed to produce afferent signaling to the nucleus tractus solitarius (NTS), followed by neural processing and resultant efferent signaling affecting peripheral organs such as the heart. (B) In this study, we hypothesized that tcVNS would reduce opioid withdrawal symptoms in comparison to sham stimulation in a double-blind, randomized, sham-controlled pilot study.