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(JD) · Jul 20, 2015, 05:43 PM

Could be. You know many scoffed at the TENS unit when it came out, now anyone can buy one without a prescription. But only 82 in the first experiment?

Quote:

We sought to develop a method for
modulating psychophysiological arousal and
stress responses by providing electrical signaling
waveforms through afferent pathways of cranial
nerves to neuromodulatory nuclei in the
brainstem. During signal transmission to cortex,
incoming sensory signals carried by the trigeminal
and facial nerves simultaneously undergo local
processing by a series of highly inter-connected
structures including the reticular formation (RF)
of the reticular activating system (RAS) located in
the pons (Figure 1). These brain stem circuits are
a first station of information integration in the
brain that support higher consciousness by
filtering, integrating, and processing incoming
sensory information [15]. Here cranial and spinal
nerve activity modulates the nucleus of the
solitary tract (NTS), locus coeruleus (LC) and
other nuclei responsible for the bottom-up
regulation of cortical gain, psychophysiological
arousal, and neurobiological responses to
environmental stimuli and stressors (Figure 1)
[16-22]. More specifically trigeminal afferent
activity can modulate noradrenergic neurons via
direct projections from the trigeminal sensory
nucleus to the LC [16]. Through these bottom-up
pathways, the LC and noradrenergic signaling
modulates human behavior, sleep/wake/arousal
cycles, and higher cortical functions including attention and cognition [16-22]. Exemplifying
functional modulation of this circuitry, trigeminal
nerve modulation has been shown to be
moderately effective for treating psychiatric
disorders like depression [23] and neurological
conditions like epilepsy [24, 25].
Given the growing interest e of TEN on self-reported
relaxation, the sample consisted of 82 healthy
right-handed subjects (34 male, 48 female)
between the ages of 18 and 50 (mean age = 24.07
± 7.07 years) that were recruited from the greater
Boston, MA area. Forty three percent of
participants were Caucasian, 35% were Asian, 12%
were African-American, and 6% were Hispanic.
These participants were fairly educated: 60%
completed some college, 22% had a college
degree, and 16% completed some post-graduate
work or had a post-graduate degree. Exclusion
criteria were as follows: neurological or
psychiatric disorder, cranial or facial metal plate
or screw implants, severe face or head trauma,
recent concussion or brain injury, recent
hospitalized for surgery/illness, high blood
pressure, heart disease, diabetes, acute eczema on
the scalp, and uncorrectable vision or hearing. In
Experiment 2, designed to study the influence of
TEN on psychophysiological arousal and the
mobilization salivary biochemicals in response to
acute stress, 20 male subjects were yoked from
the previous sample. We used males to avoid the
introduction of confounds related to hormonal
variance across menstrual cycles on stress
biochemical profiles. The subjects were between
the ages 19 to 27 (mean age = 22.3 ± 2.2 years).
Fifty percent of the subjects were Asian, 35% were
Caucasian, 10% were African American and 5%
were Hispanic. Forty percent of participants had
completed some college, 40% had a college degree
and 15% had completed some post-graduate work.
Fifty percent were employed and of those who
indicated that they were unemployed 50% were
students.