Auswirkungen der transkutanen Vagusnervstimulation auf das probabilistische Klassifikationslernen des impliziten Gedächtnisses
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Abstract
Lately the transcutaneous vagus nerve stimulation has become an important part
of the therapy of multiple neurological and psychiatric diseases like the drugresistant
epilepsy and depression. Until today the whole mechanism is not yet
fully understood. In previous neuroimaging studies an activation of the basal
ganglia, especially of the caudate nucleus, could be recorded. The caudate
nucleus plays a central role in probabilistic classification learning, which can be
observed through the weather prediction task.
The presented randomized-controlled trial investigated whether the
transcutaneous vagus nerve stimulation could have an impact on probabilistic
classification learning. In this single-blind study 20 subjects with transcutaneous
vagus nerve stimulation and 20 subjects with sham stimulation undertook the
weather prediction task, which had a total of 101 trials and was split into four
blocks. Although a learning effect for the first test blocks in both groups was
shown, there was no significant difference in learning between the group with
active vagus nerve stimulation and the control group and therefore no significant
interaction was found.
It remains unclear, if a potential interaction is limited because of the different
involved neurotransmitter systems of the vagus nerve stimulation and the
weather prediction task. Additionally, a participation of the hippocampus and of
the explicit learning system during the Weather Prediction Task is probable but
the dependency of this memory system on the transcutaneous vagus nerve
stimulation is still inconsistent in studies.
The design of the Weather Prediction Task has often been varied in previous
studies and it would be interesting to know, if there would be a difference with the
transcutaneous vagus nerve stimulation in a test divided into a learning and
testing phase or in a repeated measures design.
Further investigations into implicit and explicit memory are required to fully
understand the impact of the transcutaneous vagus nerve stimulation on learning
and cognition.
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