Post-Stroke Motor Skill Recovery Gets Boost from Vagus Nerve Stimulation
Pairing a physical therapy task aimed at improving the function of an upper limb in rodents along with vagus nerve stimulation (VNS) demonstrated a doubled long-term recovery rate relative to current therapy methods, suggest researchers from The University of Texas at Dallas.
The recovery rate was not only in the performance of the targeted task, but also in similar muscle movements that were not specifically rehabbed, the researchers add in their study, published recently in the journal
“Our experiment was designed to ask this new question: After a stroke, do you have to rehabilitate every single action?” says Dr Michael Kilgard, associate director of the Texas Biomedical Device Center (TxBDC) and Margaret Forde Jonsson, professor of Neuroscience in the School of Behavioral and Brain Sciences.