REVIEW article
Front. Hum. Neurosci.
Sec. Brain Imaging and Stimulation
Volume 19 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fnhum.2025.1609654
Left and Right Vagus Nerve Stimulation: Historical Perspectives, Clinical Efficacy, and Future Directions
Provisionally accepted
- 1Air Force Research Laboratory, Dayton, United States
- 2Dayton Children's Hospital, Dayton, Ohio, United States
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Neuromodulation has profoundly transformed medical science, offering new treatments for various neurological conditions. Stimulation techniques that target the brain, spinal cord, trigeminal nerve, and vagus nerve (VN) use electrical impulses to modulate neural functions. Among these, vagus nerve stimulation (VNS) is distinguished for its use to stimulate the VN to modulate neural functions. VNS shows promising applications across a wide range of neurological conditions, exemplifying the ongoing evolution of neuromodulation. As VNS continues to prove its efficacy, an important consideration in its application arises over the optimal VN stimulation site due to the bilateral nature of the VN. This review highlights the need for comparative studies of left VNS (L-VNS) and right VNS (R-VNS) to enhance our understanding of neurophysiology.The advantages and limitations of stimulation to the left VN or right VN are examined to potentially lead to more personalized and effective treatment strategies.
Keywords: Left VNS, right, VNS, clinical efficacy, Epilepsy, cardiac function, Depression, Cognition
Received: 10 Apr 2025; Accepted: 26 Jun 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Sharma, Jones, Lober and Hatcher-Solis. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Krysten A Jones, Air Force Research Laboratory, Dayton, United States
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