86 results match your criteria: "Texas Biomedical Device Center[Affiliation]"

Vagus nerve stimulation (VNS) is a therapeutic intervention previously shown to enhance fear extinction in rats. VNS is approved for use in humans for the treatment of epilepsy, depression, and stroke, and it is currently under investigation as an adjuvant to exposure therapy in the treatment of PTSD. However, the mechanisms by which VNS enhances extinction of conditioned fear remain unresolved.

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Article Synopsis
  • * This study explored the effectiveness of vagus nerve stimulation (VNS) combined with sound exposure to enhance neural responses in the inferior colliculus of VPA-exposed rats.
  • * Results showed that VNS paired with multiple tone frequencies improved sound processing by 44%, while VNS paired with a specific speech sound led to a slight decrease in auditory response, suggesting that targeted stimulation can enhance auditory processing in these models.
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Paper lateral flow immunoassays combined with surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) technology have gained increasing attention due to their high sensitivity characteristics resulting from the amplified SERS signals of the plasmon-enhanced optical probes. In contrast to conventional colorimetric lateral flow strips, SERS paper lateral flow strips (SERS-PLFSs) are currently not commercially available for widespread use. Analytical validation is the key step for commercialization.

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Article Synopsis
  • Paired associative stimulation (PAS) combines transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) and peripheral nerve stimulation (PNS) to enhance motor-evoked potentials (MEPs) and promote spinal plasticity, particularly beneficial for rehabilitation after spinal cord injury (SCI).
  • A new high-frequency variant of PAS, called "high-PAS," was tested alongside noninvasive auricular vagus nerve stimulation (aVNS) to see if it could further boost MEP enhancement.
  • While PAS significantly improved MEPs compared to aVNS alone, the combined effects did not yield significant results, indicating that more optimization of the aVNS setup is needed for potential use in SCI patients.
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Paired vagus nerve stimulation (VNS) has emerged as a promising strategy to potentiate recovery after neurological injury. This approach, which combines short bursts of electrical stimulation of the vagus nerve with rehabilitation exercises, received approval from the US Food and Drug Aministration in 2021 as the first neuromodulation-based therapy for chronic stroke. Because this treatment is increasingly implemented in clinical practice, there is a need to take stock of what we know about this approach and what we have yet to learn.

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Background: Stress is one of the most common precipitating factors in migraine and is identified as a trigger in nearly 70% of patients. Responses to stress include release of glucocorticoids as an adaptive mechanism, but this may also contribute to migraine attacks. Here, we investigated the role of glucocorticoids on stress-induced migraine-like behaviors.

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Impairments in somatosensory function are a common and often debilitating consequence of neurological injury, with few effective interventions. Building on success in rehabilitation for motor dysfunction, the delivery of vagus nerve stimulation (VNS) combined with tactile rehabilitation has emerged as a potential approach to enhance recovery of somatosensation. In order to maximize the effectiveness of VNS therapy and promote translation to clinical implementation, we sought to optimize the stimulation paradigm and identify neural mechanisms that underlie VNS-dependent recovery.

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Learning new skills requires neuroplasticity. Vagus nerve stimulation (VNS) during sensory and motor events can increase neuroplasticity in networks related to these events and might therefore serve to facilitate learning on sensory and motor tasks. We tested if VNS could broadly improve learning on a wide variety of tasks across different skill domains in healthy, female adult rats.

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Background: Recent evidence demonstrates that manually triggered vagus nerve stimulation (VNS) combined with rehabilitation leads to increased recovery of upper limb motor function after stroke. This approach is premised on studies demonstrating that the timing of stimulation relative to movements is a key determinant in the effectiveness of this approach.

Objective: The overall goal of the study was to identify an algorithm that could be used to automatically trigger VNS on the best movements during rehabilitative exercises while maintaining a desired interval between stimulations to reduce the burden of manual stimulation triggering.

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Hearing loss can lead to long-lasting effects on the central nervous system, and current therapies, such as auditory training and rehabilitation, show mixed success in improving perception and speech comprehension. Vagus nerve stimulation (VNS) is an adjunctive therapy that can be paired with rehabilitation to facilitate behavioral recovery after neural injury. However, VNS for auditory recovery has not been tested after severe hearing loss or significant damage to peripheral receptors.

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Degraded inferior colliculus responses to complex sounds in prenatally exposed VPA rats.

J Neurodev Disord

January 2024

School of Behavioral and Brain Sciences, The University of Texas at Dallas, 800 West Campbell Road BSB11, Richardson, TX, 75080, USA.

Background: Individuals with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) often exhibit altered sensory processing and deficits in language development. Prenatal exposure to valproic acid (VPA) increases the risk for ASD and impairs both receptive and expressive language. Like individuals with ASD, rodents prenatally exposed to VPA exhibit degraded auditory cortical processing and abnormal neural activity to sounds.

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Vagus Nerve Stimulation Must Occur During Tactile Rehabilitation to Enhance Somatosensory Recovery.

Neuroscience

November 2023

Texas Biomedical Device Center, The University of Texas at Dallas, Richardson, TX, USA; Erik Jonsson School of Engineering and Computer Science, The University of Texas at Dallas, Richardson, TX, USA; School of Behavioral and Brain Sciences, The University of Texas at Dallas, Richardson, TX, USA.

Chronic sensory loss is a common and undertreated consequence of many forms of neurological injury. Emerging evidence indicates that vagus nerve stimulation (VNS) delivered during tactile rehabilitation promotes recovery of somatosensation. Here, we systematically varied the timing of VNS relative to tactile rehabilitation to determine the paradigm that yields the greatest degree of somatosensory recovery after peripheral nerve injury (PNI).

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Introduction: Repeatedly pairing a tone with vagus nerve stimulation (VNS) alters frequency tuning across the auditory pathway. Pairing VNS with speech sounds selectively enhances the primary auditory cortex response to the paired sounds. It is not yet known how altering the speech sounds paired with VNS alters responses.

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Background: Chronic sensory loss is a common and undertreated consequence of many forms of neurological injury. Emerging evidence indicates that vagus nerve stimulation (VNS) delivered during tactile rehabilitation promotes recovery of somatosensation.

Objective: Here, we characterize the amount, intensity, frequency, and duration of VNS therapy paradigms to determine the optimal dosage for VNS-dependent enhancement of recovery in a model of peripheral nerve injury (PNI).

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How to fail with paired VNS therapy.

Brain Stimul

November 2023

Texas Biomedical Device Center, The University of Texas at Dallas, Richardson, TX, USA; School of Behavioral and Brain Sciences, The University of Texas at Dallas, Richardson, TX, USA.

Vagus nerve stimulation (VNS) has gained enormous traction as a promising bioelectronic therapy. In particular, the delivery of VNS paired with training to promote neural changes has demonstrated clinical success for stroke recovery and found far-reaching application in other domains, from autism to psychiatric disorders to normal learning. The success of paired VNS has been extensively documented.

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Intracortical microstimulation (ICMS) of the somatosensory cortex via penetrating microelectrode arrays (MEAs) can evoke cutaneous and proprioceptive sensations for restoration of perception in individuals with spinal cord injuries. However, ICMS current amplitudes needed to evoke these sensory percepts tend to change over time following implantation. Animal models have been used to investigate the mechanisms by which these changes occur and aid in the development of new engineering strategies to mitigate such changes.

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Intracortical microstimulation (ICMS) of the somatosensory cortex via penetrating microelectrode arrays (MEAs) can evoke cutaneous and proprioceptive sensations for restoration of perception in individuals with spinal cord injuries. However, ICMS current amplitudes needed to evoke these sensory percepts tend to change over time following implantation. Animal models have been used to investigate the mechanisms by which these changes occur and aid in the development of new engineering strategies to mitigate such changes.

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Stroke is a leading cause of chronic motor disability. While physical rehabilitation can promote functional recovery, several barriers prevent patients from receiving optimal rehabilitative care. Easy access to at-home rehabilitative tools could increase patients' ability to participate in rehabilitative exercises, which may lead to improved outcomes.

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Anxiety disorders affect a large percentage of individuals who have an autism spectrum disorder (ASD). In children with ASD, excessive anxiety is also linked to gastrointestinal problems, self-injurious behaviors, and depressive symptoms. Exposure-based cognitive behavioral therapies are effective treatments for anxiety disorders in children with ASD, but high relapse rates indicate the need for additional treatment strategies.

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Studies have indicated that vagus nerve stimulation (VNS) enhances extinction learning in rodent models. Here, we investigated if pairing VNS with the conditioned stimulus is required for the enhancing effects of VNS. Adult Sprague-Dawley rats were exposed to intense stress followed by fear conditioning training to produce resistant fear.

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Nerve injury affecting the upper limb is a leading cause of lifelong disability. Damage to the nerves in the arm often causes weakness and somatosensory dysfunction ranging from numbness to pain. Previous studies show that combining brief bursts of electrical vagus nerve stimulation (VNS) with motor or tactile rehabilitation can restore forelimb function after median and ulnar nerve injury, which causes hyposensitivity of the ventral forelimb.

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Blockade of the mineralocorticoid receptors in the medial prefrontal cortex prevents the acquisition of one-trial tolerance in mice.

Behav Brain Res

August 2022

Psychobiology Group/Department of Psychology/CECH-UFSCar, São Carlos, SP 13565-905, Brazil; Joint Graduate Program in Physiological Sciences UFSCar/UNESP, Rod. Washington Luís, Km 235, São Carlos, SP 13565-905, Brazil; Graduate Program in Psychology UFSCar, Rod. Washington Luís, Km 235, São Carlos, SP 13565-905, Brazil; Neuroscience and Behavioral Institute, Av. do Café, 2.450, 14050-220 Ribeirão Preto, SP, Brazil. Electronic address:

One-trial tolerance (OTT) is characterized by the lack of anxiolytic-like effects of benzodiazepines in animals submitted to a trial 2 in the elevated plus-maze (EPM) and is described to be influenced by learning mechanisms. Mineralocorticoid receptors (MR) in the infralimbic subregion (IL) of the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) are important modulators of emotional learning, but the MR involvement in the establishment of OTT remains unclear. We investigated the effects of intra-IL infusions of RU 28318 (an MR antagonist) on the OTT to the anxiolytic effects of midazolam (MDZ, GABA-benzodiazepine agonist) in mice exposed to a two-trial protocol in the EPM.

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Vagus nerve stimulation (VNS) delivered during motor rehabilitation enhances recovery from a wide array of neurological injuries and was recently approved by the U.S. FDA for chronic stroke.

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Introduction: Peripheral nerve injury is a common cause of lifelong disability in the United States. Although the etiology varies, most traumatic nerve injuries occur in the upper limb and include damage to the radial nerve. In conjunction with the well-described effects of peripheral damage, nerve injuries are accompanied by changes in the central nervous system.

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Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is associated with decreased activity in the prefrontal cortex. PTSD-like pathophysiology and behaviors have been observed in rodents exposed to a single prolonged stress (SPS) procedure. When animals are left alone for 7 days after SPS treatment, they show increased anxiety-like behavior and impaired extinction of conditioned fear, and reduced activity in the prefrontal cortex.

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