{"id":234681,"date":"2026-04-06T10:25:41","date_gmt":"2026-04-06T15:25:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/04\/how-stimulating-the-vagus-nerve-could-protect-the-brain-from-alzheimers-disease"},"modified":"2026-04-06T10:25:41","modified_gmt":"2026-04-06T15:25:41","slug":"how-stimulating-the-vagus-nerve-could-protect-the-brain-from-alzheimers-disease","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/04\/how-stimulating-the-vagus-nerve-could-protect-the-brain-from-alzheimers-disease","title":{"rendered":"How stimulating the vagus nerve could protect the brain from Alzheimer\u2019s disease"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/how-stimulating-the-vagus-nerve-could-protect-the-brain-from-alzheimers-disease.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Developing tau tangles doesn\u2019t mean a person has Alzheimer\u2019s disease \u2013 in fact, it happens to nearly everyone to varying degrees. But because these changes start in the locus coeruleus, some brain researchers \u2013 myself included \u2013 see this area as a <a href=\"https:\/\/reporter.nih.gov\/search\/QN_fZSDgU0a82pVdEmNIJw\/project-details\/10373349\">canary in the coal mine<\/a> for developing Alzheimer\u2019s disease.<\/p>\n<p>We are exploring whether stopping or slowing down tau tangles in this brain region, or otherwise maintaining its health, may be a way to interrupt how the disease ultimately unfolds and to prevent other aspects of cognitive aging.<\/p>\n<p>Emerging <a href=\"https:\/\/scholar.google.com\/citations?user=E6pZe0sAAAAJ&hl=en\">research from my lab<\/a> and others is investigating the idea that a therapy called <a href=\"https:\/\/www.mayoclinic.org\/tests-procedures\/vagus-nerve-stimulation\/about\/pac-20384565\">vagus nerve stimulation<\/a>, which is already widely used for other health conditions, could be one way of keeping the locus coeruleus functioning properly.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Developing tau tangles doesn\u2019t mean a person has Alzheimer\u2019s disease \u2013 in fact, it happens to nearly everyone to varying degrees. But because these changes start in the locus coeruleus, some brain researchers \u2013 myself included \u2013 see this area as a canary in the coal mine for developing Alzheimer\u2019s disease. We are exploring whether [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":662,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,269,47],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-234681","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biotech-medical","category-life-extension","category-neuroscience"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/234681","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/662"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=234681"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/234681\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=234681"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=234681"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=234681"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}