CORRECTION article

Front. Neurosci., 13 March 2019

Sec. Neural Technology

Volume 13 - 2019 | https://doi.org/10.3389/fnins.2019.00186

Corrigendum: Memory Reinforcement and Attenuation by Activating the Human Locus Coeruleus via Transcutaneous Vagus Nerve Stimulation

  • Department of Neurodegenerative Diseases and Geriatric Psychiatry, Neurology, University of Bonn Medical Center, Bonn, Germany

In the original article, there was an error. The stimulation intensity and the atVNS effects on anxiety extinction, were incorrectly stated.

A correction has been made to the section Locus Coeruleus Activation via Transcutaneous Vagus Nerve Stimulation, subsection Facilitation of Learning Fear Extinction and the Attenuation of Fear Learning:

“Neuronal assemblies between the amygdala, hippocampus, anterior cingulated cortex, and ventromedial prefrontal cortex are important for consolidating and extinguishing fear memory (Fullana et al., ; Marek and Sah, ). A neuronal correlate of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is impaired fear-memory extinction. Noradrenaline plays a major role in the pathogenesis of PTSD (Hendrickson and Raskind, ). AtVNS via LC activation might strengthen the impaired LC-dependent noradrenergic transmission in PTSD modulating fear-memory extinction. Experimental animal evidence suggests that extinction-memory impairment in rats with PTSD-like behavior is reversible by applying iVNS. In addition, PTSD-like behavior in rats (e.g., hyperarousal) can be attenuated by iVNS (Noble et al., ). However, to date, the atVNS effect on extinction memory has only been investigated in healthy subjects. Extinction memory can be facilitated in healthy subjects, as two recent studies showed (Burger et al., , ). Similar concha cymba-atVNS parameters were utilized in both studies (25 Hz, ≤ 0.5 mA) (Burger et al., , ), and fear-extinction learning in healthy students was facilitated (Burger et al., ) (Figure 1). However, the storage of extinction memory one day later was unaffected by atVNS (Burger et al., ). Another working group demonstrated no atVNS-dependent modulation of anxiety extinction (Genheimer et al., ) being likely based on various stimulation parameter such as mean intensity (1.2 mA) (Genheimer et al., ) and timing of atVNS. Overall, these studies reveal promising potential for atVNS as a tool for modulating extinction memory in anxiety disorders”.

The authors apologize for this error and state that this does not change the scientific conclusions of the article in any way. The original article has been updated.

References

  • 1

    BurgerA. M.VerkuilB.FenlonH.ThijsL.CoolsL.MillerH. C.et al. (2017). Mixed evidence for the potential of non-invasive transcutaneous vagal nerve stimulation to improve the extinction and retention of fear. Behav. Res. Ther.97, 6474. 10.1016/j.brat.2017.07.005

  • 2

    BurgerA. M.VerkuilB.Van DiestI.Van der DoesW.ThayerJ. F.BrosschotJ. F. (2016). The effects of transcutaneous vagus nerve stimulation on conditioned fear extinction in humans. Neurobiol. Learn. Mem.132, 4956. 10.1016/j.nlm.2016.05.007

  • 3

    FullanaM. A.Albajes-EizagirreA.Soriano-MasC.VervlietB.CardonerN.BenetO.et al. (2018). Fear extinction in the human brain: a meta-analysis of fMRI studies in healthy participants. Neurosci. Biobehav. Rev.88, 1625. 10.1016/j.neubiorev.2018.03.002

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    GenheimerH.AndreattaM.AsanE.PauliP. (2017). Reinstatement of contextual conditioned anxiety in virtual reality and the effects of transcutaneous vagus nerve stimulation in humans. Sci. Rep.7:17886. 10.1038/s41598-017-18183-3

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    HendricksonR. C.RaskindM. A. (2016). Noradrenergic dysregulation in the pathophysiology of PTSD. Exp. Neurol.284 (Pt-B), 181195. 10.1016/j.expneurol.2016.05.014

  • 6

    MarekR.SahP. (2018). Neural circuits mediating fear learning and extinction. Adv. Neurobiol.21, 3548. 10.1007/978-3-319-94593-4_2

  • 7

    NobleL. J.GonzalezI. J.MeruvaV. B.CallahanK. A.BelfortB. D.RamanathanK. R.et al. (2017). Effects of vagus nerve stimulation on extinction of conditioned fear and post-traumatic stress disorder symptoms in rats. Transl. Psychiatry7:e1217. 10.1038/tp.2017.191

Summary

Keywords

auricular transcutaneous vagus nerve stimulation, memory, locus coeruleus, noradrenaline, hippocampus

Citation

Hansen N (2019) Corrigendum: Memory Reinforcement and Attenuation by Activating the Human Locus Coeruleus via Transcutaneous Vagus Nerve Stimulation. Front. Neurosci. 13:186. doi: 10.3389/fnins.2019.00186

Received

21 January 2019

Accepted

15 February 2019

Published

13 March 2019

Volume

13 - 2019

Edited and reviewed by

Ali Yadollahpour, Ahvaz Jundishapur University of Medical Sciences, Iran

Updates

Copyright

*Correspondence: Niels Hansen

This article was submitted to Neural Technology, a section of the journal Frontiers in Neuroscience

Disclaimer

All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.

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