Trigeminal nerve stimulation boosts memory in study — SkimNews
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- Myles McLaughlin at the Leuven Brain Institute and colleagues found that 1-second bursts of 200-hertz electrical stimulation to the trigeminal nerve raised signalling between hippocampal neurons by about 20% in anaesthetised rats, an effect lasting at least 90 minutes after stimulation ended.
- The team traced the mechanism to the locus coeruleus, the brain's primary noradrenaline producer — chemically suppressing the locus coeruleus eliminated the lasting increase in hippocampal activity.
- In nine epilepsy patients with electrodes already implanted for routine monitoring, 20 minutes of skin-electrode stimulation around the jaw produced the same hippocampal electrical response observed in the rats.
- In 36 healthy adults, the stimulation improved recall of strangers' occupations (but not their names) by roughly one extra association retained, compared with a sham session, per McLaughlin.
- Siyar Bahadir at The Feinstein Institutes, who was not involved in the study, praised the multi-stage chain from rat synaptic changes to direct human hippocampal recordings to memory testing as substantial and convincing.
- The team is now comparing trigeminal nerve stimulation with stimulation of the median nerve in the arm in up to 40 volunteers to test whether peripheral nerve stimulation more generally boosts memory.
Why it matters: Prior memory-boosting electrical approaches have been highly invasive or required lying in a scanner; this skin-electrode method on the face is non-invasive. Bahadir noted that if the benefits hold up, the technique could be packaged into a wearable device — accessible to far more people than current options — and the ongoing median-nerve comparison will reveal whether the memory benefit is specific to the trigeminal pathway.
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