Tolerability of caloric vestibular stimulation in a persistent pain cohort

Persistent pain is a major healthcare problem worldwide, costing billions of dollars each year and being commonly refractory to existing treatments [for citations, see 1]. We read with interest the recent research article by Hagiwara et al. [2] in your journal, in which it was reported that active, but not sham, galvanic vestibular stimulation (GVS), significantly modulated experimental pain in 16 healthy volunteers. GVS stimulates the vestibular system via direct current applied to bilateral mastoids, inducing activation in various vestibular, cognitive, affective and pain-related brain regions.

Source: BRAIN STIMULATION: Basic, Translational, and Clinical Research in Neuromodulation - July 16, 2020 Category: Neurology Authors: Trung T. Ngo, Wendy N. Barsdell, Phillip C.F. Law, Carolyn A. Arnold, Michael J. Chou, Andrew K. Nunn, Douglas J. Brown, Paul B. Fitzgerald, Stephen J. Gibson, Steven M. Miller Source Type: research