Deans' stroke musings: Closed-loop movement-paired transcutaneous auricular vagus nerve stimulation for upper-limb rehabilitation: a feasibility study

Changing stroke rehab and research worldwide now.Time is Brain! trillions and trillions of neurons that DIE each day because there are NO effective hyperacute therapies besides tPA(only 12% effective). I have 523 posts on hyperacute therapy, enough for researchers to spend decades proving them out. These are my personal ideas and blog on stroke rehabilitation and stroke research. Do not attempt any of these without checking with your medical provider. Unless you join me in agitating, when you need these therapies they won't be there.

What this blog is for:

My blog is not to help survivors recover, it is to have the 10 million yearly stroke survivors light fires underneath their doctors, stroke hospitals and stroke researchers to get stroke solved. 100% recovery. The stroke medical world is completely failing at that goal, they don't even have it as a goal. Shortly after getting out of the hospital and getting NO information on the process or protocols of stroke rehabilitation and recovery I started searching on the internet and found that no other survivor received useful information. This is an attempt to cover all stroke rehabilitation information that should be readily available to survivors so they can talk with informed knowledge to their medical staff. It lays out what needs to be done to get stroke survivors closer to 100% recovery. It's quite disgusting that this information is not available from every stroke association and doctors group.

Thursday, May 21, 2026

Closed-loop movement-paired transcutaneous auricular vagus nerve stimulation for upper-limb rehabilitation: a feasibility study

Have your competent? doctor compare this to all the other vagus nerve products, especially the ones that don't require surgery.

Closed-loop movement-paired transcutaneous auricular vagus nerve stimulation for upper-limb rehabilitation: a feasibility study

We are providing an unedited version of this manuscript to give early access to its findings. Before final publication, the manuscript will undergo further editing. Please note there may be errors present which affect the content, and all legal disclaimers apply.

Abstract

Vagus nerve stimulation (VNS) paired with physical rehabilitation has shown promise for improving upper-limb function after neurological injury. In this study, we introduce SmartVNS, a wearable system that automatically delivers movement-paired transcutaneous auricular VNS using a wrist-worn intertial measurement unit (IMU) for accurate functional movement detection. We evaluated feasibility, usability and performance of the SmartVNS system in a four-week, 20-session clinical feasibility study involving nine individuals with stroke or spinal cord injury during conventional therapy. Despite a wide range of baseline upper-limb function in patients (ARAT scores 0-52), the system adapted to individual abilities and demonstrated a consistent stimulation rate between sessions and patients, averaging 14.7 stimulations/min with a low variability (SD = 3.4 stimulations/min; n = 9). The IMU-based movement detection algorithm achieved stimulation precision comparable to therapist manual triggering (precision as mean ± SEM: SmartVNS: 76.3 ± 3.1%, therapists: 82.4 ± 2.6%, video analysis used a ground truth), while delivering stimulation in double the number of movements (sensitivity as mean ± SEM: SmartVNS: 50.4 ± 5.0%, therapists: 23.4 ± 4.7%, video analysis used a ground truth). The system demonstrated high usability (patients and therapists rated UMUX: 85 ± 12%) and was well-tolerated by participants, with patients able to self-apply the device. Exploratory clinical outcomes showed consistent functional improvements across participants. These findings support the feasibility and usability of SmartVNS as a scalable neuromodulation platform to support neurorehabilitation.