Vagus Nerve Stimulation to Enhance Memory in Aging (VNS)

Stanford University

Status: Begins enrollment in 11 months

Conditions: Aging; Alzheimer Disease

Treatments: Device: Transcutaneous Auricular Vagus Nerve Stimulation (taVNS)

Study type: Interventional

Funder types: Other; NIH

Identifiers

NCT07214194

VNS102025

Details and patient eligibility

About

The aim of this study is to determine whether non-invasive vagus nerve stimulation enhances memory formation in cognitively healthy older adults and whether the effects of stimulation depend on gut and brain health.

Enrollment: 150 estimated patients

Sex: All

Ages: 18 to 80 years old

Volunteers: Accepts Healthy Volunteers

Inclusion criteria

• Ages 18-30 years or 65-80 years
• Normal or corrected-to-normal vision (visual acuity)
• Fluent in English

Exclusion criteria

• Pregnant
• Symptoms of memory loss
• History of a neurological, psychiatric, or medical condition that could affect cognition or preclude MRI or pupillometry
• Use of medications known to alter cognition
• For older adults, neuropsychological performance that falls outside 1.5 standard deviations of age-adjusted norms and no self-reported memory or attention complaints

Trial design

Primary purpose: Basic Science

Allocation: Randomized

Interventional model: Crossover Assignment

Masking: Single Blind

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150 participants in 2 patient groups

Active vagus nerve stimulation

Experimental group

Description:

Participants will receive active stimulation during memory encoding of picture-word pairs. Active stimulation will occur during two learning phases of the learning and memory task. The total duration of these two phases will be less than 30 minutes.

Treatment:

Device: Transcutaneous Auricular Vagus Nerve Stimulation (taVNS)

Sham stimulation

Sham Comparator group

Description:

Participants will receive sham stimulation during memory encoding of picture-word pairs. Sham stimulation will occur during two learning phases of the learning and memory task. The total duration of these two phases will be less than 30 minutes.

Treatment:

Device: Transcutaneous Auricular Vagus Nerve Stimulation (taVNS)