Transcutaneous auricular vagus nerve stimulation improves anxiety symptoms and cortical activity during verbal fluency task in Parkinson's disease with anxiety.

Objective: To investigate the effect of 20/4Hz transcutaneous auricular vagus nerve stimulation (taVNS) on anxiety symptoms in Parkinson's disease (PD) and the potential neural mechanism.

Methods: In the current randomized, double-blind, sham-controlled trial, 30 PD patients with anxiety (PD-A), 30 PD patients without anxiety (PD-nA), and 30 healthy controls (HCs) were enrolled. PD-A patients were randomly (1:1) allotted to real taVNS stimulation group (RS) or sham stimulation group (SS) to explore the efficacy of a two-week treatment of taVNS to promote anxiety recovery.